Endre Farkas is a resident Montreal poet.

“ Prison conditions have been a subject of intense debate in Turkey in the past year. Prisoners have usually been housed in large dormitories that hold 60 or sometimes more prisoners, but the Turkish authorities have started to build new wings to existing prisons and 11 so-called F-Type prisons based on a cell-type system that were due to be brought into use in 2000. Prisoners and their families as well as many human rights defenders and other civil organizations have been concerned that under the new cell-type system regimes of isolation might be introduced which would increase the risk of torture or ill-treatment in prisons. Fears that the new system might lead to small group isolation or solitary confinement were founded in so far as Article 16 of the Anti-Terror Law lays down a draconian regime of intense isolation, in which ''convicted prisoners will not be permitted contact or communication with other convicted prisoners.

Following the start of the process of replacing dormitories with smaller cells there were major protests and clashes in prisons which were ended by force. From October 2000 more than 1000 political prisoners participated in a hunger strike in protest against the F-Type prisons.”

Amnesty International April 2001

When I was in Europe last year (April 2005) I met activists who were trying to bring this situation to the attention of the world. One way was to publish a magazine by those who had been and or were still inside those “F-Type” prisons. This magazine was translated roughly into English. They asked me to polish it up. And so I became their polisher up. In this issue they had 3 diary entries by prisoners in an F type prison. I was moved by the spirit of the entries and the strength of those who wrote them. As I worked on them, I realized how eloquent their commitment was and how their honest texts had poetry in them. So I adapted it for two voices and will have the instruments mentioned in the texts accompanying it when Carolyn Marie Souaid and I will present it in French in Paris December 16, 2005 at The 4 th National Symposium Against Isolation.

Radio Resistance

For all prisoners of resistance

In your isolation you are stripped

to strip you of dignity, of choice, of art.

You are left only your naked body,

belief and imagination.

So you make them your food of resistance

and fast and starve them of their power

of deciding when and what you eat,

of pissing or not pissing into your meals.

So you forge instruments of resistance:

bed legs into percussions, bed springs

into strings, paper into winds and

torture them to confess their impotence.

So you become radio resistance

and your broken cell windows

become speakers broadcasting songs

of freedom to all,

across the prisonless land.

**************

There are a few terms in the Diary entries that need to be explained.

Boran is the term for a resistor who has chosen to go on a Death Fast.

Baglama is a Turkish folk string instrument. If a single instrument were to represent Turkish people’s spirit, it would have to be the baglama.

F-Type prisons are the isolation prisons constructed by Turkey to comply with European Union demands for compliance with Human Rights demands. The irony is that they violate as many human rights as the overcrowded ones.

Sincan is the name of one of the F Type prisons.

Carolyn and I have “scored” these entries for two voices and music to magnify its already powerful eloquence.

**************

Voice 1: Dear Diary

Hello.

I know that I have neglected you for too long.

Let me tell you what has happened.

Due to the kindness of the authorities, “liberating” some of our members, our numbers have decreased.

Voice 2: Many cells have become empty and distances between those who are left have increased.

It’s as if large villages had been divided into tiny slaughterhouses.

Voice 1&2: We don’t hear from each other for the longest of times.

Voice 1: But as that old adage says “Mountains can not come together but people can.”

Voice 1&2: So we know that neither large distances nor barbed wire fences can separate us. So we come together and are one.

Voice 2: But so much has happened since we last met.

Voice 1: All the cells beside, above and below our Boran*

Voice 2: Our Brave death fast resistor

Voice 1: were emptied, leaving him totally isolated.

Voice 2: He had been fasting for over a hundred days. He was on a Death Fast.

Voice 1: How can I describe our feelings?

Voice 1&2: We are two steps away from our comrade, yet we can not help him.

Voice 2: It is cold, cold as if angels of death had linked arms and encircled us.

Voice 1: &2: We have thousands of questions and worries.

Voice 2: How can he manage all alone in that cell?

Voice 1: What if he faints, falls and is injured? He has nobody to get help for him.

Voice 2: What if he can’t walk anymore? There is nobody to give him a glass of water.

Questions crowd my mind.

Voice 1: It is painful to bear; to know that you can not help him.

Voice 1&2: I feel the weight of isolation.

Voice 1: It is even forbidden to take his clothes to wash them. Even if we tell him to throw them over the wall to us, we know he doesn’t have the strength to.

Voice 2: But in spite of his weakness, with valiant effort, he tries help in our trafficking of notes to each other.

Voice 1&2: We would die for him.

Voice 1: Two comrades, friends went to his cell and were glad to see him. Our Boran was glad to see thembut the guards decided that three in a cell was too much, so they took one comrade back. They weren’t allowed to embrace.

Voice 2: Our Boran went to see his lawyer.

Voice 2: Dear Diary

Do you hear the song? After four years of being denied, we are permitted to bring a baglama** into our cells. Before, we had to buy it from the prison canteen. Now it can be brought in by our visitors. When it became possible, everyone started to ask for them.

Voice 1: But of course the authorities invented reasons to ban them. The great state has put a limit of 0 per cell. It doesn’t matter. We don’t care, because like all restrictions, we riddle these with holes.

Voice 1&2: We make shepherd’s flutes from paper,

Voice 1: harmonicas from combs,

Voice 2: drums from plastic jugs

Voice 1&2: and a symphony from all kinds of material.

Voice 2: Do you hear the song from the cell next door?

Voice 1: Dear Diary

Members of the Turkish Parliament serving on the Human Rights Commission have visited some of the F Type Prisons.*** They didn’t come to Sincan**** even though it’s close to the Parliament buildings. Their report began “The prisoners in the F type prisons face serious psychological problems.”

Voice 2: They’re blind! What psychological problems? Isolation is utterly murderous, murderous and murderous!”

Voice 1: The isolation cells are murderous. The isolation they never talk about took the lives of 120 stout-hearted people. And continues to kill more.

Voice 2: Tashin Korkmaz was the last victim. “The shot him in the heart; even if it wasn’t with a bullet.” He is now, one of too many, who are missing.The isolation and deprivation in F Type Prison cells continue to kill.

Voice 1: Do not be mistaken. They are human grinding mills.

“Psychological problems are,” if I may be permitted to say, “a drop in the bucket.”

Voice 1&2: But in spite of all these conditions, we are strong.

Voice 1: Our secret is “resistance” and our organized and collective life.

Voice 2: And when these secrets are learned by all, then everyone will see the truth. Then isolation won’t be able to kill people like Tashin nor take the lives of another 120 stout-hearted people.

Voice 1&2: And then this tyranny will be smashed into pieces.

Voice 1&2 : Salut.

Endre Farkas

Oct. 29/05