Ahmet Altan — one of Turkey’s most celebrated journalists and novelists — spent years behind bars. No conviction for violence. No proven crime. Just words. Just journalism.
I attended the event where Ahmet Altan met with his readers at one of Paris’s most distinguished venues, La Bibliothèque de l’Institut. Hearing once more from a master’s own lips how magical a formula reading and literature truly are gave me a rare sense of relief.
Today, 85% of the world’s population is literate — a figure that stood at around 20% a century ago. Yet reading itself is an art, a craft of fine precision. I am not speaking of those who read indiscriminately, like people who eat without any regard for what they consume. I mean reading that is deliberate, selective, and conscious.
Ahmet Altan spoke of the vast inner space that literature opened for him during his years in prison. A writer’s life — everything — can be taken from him, he said, “but even if you throw him in prison, you cannot take his writing from him.” He then shared a memory: “I noticed the guard looked extremely stressed and asked why. He told me: ‘You write and read, so you are not depressed — but those who don’t read or write are. That’s what makes our job so much harder.’”
Literature Saves Lives
He spoke of how life is movement, and that when movement is destroyed, life itself begins to wither — yet it can be reborn through the motion and imagination that begins in the mind.
“When there is nothing to measure time by, it crushes you like a monster. Prison was like that. I lost seven kilograms in twelve days in solitary confinement. It was there that I understood why human beings divide time into pieces. Life is movement. Prison destroys movement. Literature creates a life within that stillness — and it is salvation.”
Literature Is a Telescope
Literature carries a dimension of moral refinement. It invites human beings toward virtue and toward assuming responsibility for one another. It offers the possibility of comparing the realities formed in our inner world with the realities of the world outside — and of drawing closer to truth.
For some, literature is music; for others, a different domain of art; for others still, a form of devotion, a passion, an ideal. Whatever it is that tethers us to life and opens space for movement — it is through those realities of the mind and spirit that we either hold on or disappear. Altan drew attention to precisely this:
“Literature is a telescope trained on the human soul. No one in this world reveals their true reality. A writer can give voice to every feeling and thought. It is then that you see the depths — and the truth.
I do not believe a novel operates by fixed order or law; it is like walking through a desert. A desert storm, a scorching sun… Crossing hundreds of pages is an adventure.
Literature is an elixir that expands time. When you are suffering — or about to suffer — the best thing you can do is expand time. Pain does not fit within our limits. Literature, history, music, and art expand time. You come to understand that this pain has not befallen you alone. And that understanding lightens the burden.”
Writing Is Revolution and Resistance
Writing carries a force capable of shattering authoritarian regimes. Ibn Rushd’s words capture this perfectly: “Ideas have wings; no one can prevent them from reaching people.” The only power dictatorships have never been able to silence is the power of writing and thought. Even centuries later, a single sentence — a declaration written in honest pursuit of truth — can bring the most magnificent of empires to ruin. Those who hold power may darken your life, but through a single piece of writing, you can illuminate the world around you.
Émile Zola’s defense of Dreyfus helped lay the ground for the closing of an entire era. If you can speak to the minds of your readers — if you can make them feel — you will have achieved the greatest revolution of all. Literature brings you together with people you have never met, and in a city somewhere in the world, it is literature that gathers you in the same room.
Ahmet Altan also spoke of never having betrayed writing, and of keeping the promise he made to his father. Writing liberates. Every word grows wings and takes flight to every corner of the world. In today’s world of repetition and uniformity — an era in which everything is beginning to resemble everything else through the flattening force of popular culture — writing and reading enrich us and fortify the world of the spirit.
There is a kind of worship of causes in our time; it is as though the causes themselves have become supreme, and the power that brought them into being has been forgotten. In an age so dense with materialism, it will once again be literature — readings illuminated by revelation, and the diverse languages of an art worthy of those who are heirs to this earth — that will be our deliverance.
