Zarakolu learns Kurdish in jail

PanARMENIAN.Net - Prominent publisher, writer and activist Ragip Zarakolu, who was arrested last month within the scope of the ongoing Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) trials, wrote a letter to the Hürriyet Daily News from prison, casting light on his present condition.

“Everything has been proceeding in an exceedingly Kafkaesque manner since the start,” Zarakolu, recipient of numerous prestigious awards, said in his letter.

According to the publication, Zarakolu spoke about his efforts to be transferred to the same penitentiary where his son Deniz Zarakolu, a Ph.D. student in Istanbul’s Bilgi University, has been detained in the northwestern province of Edirne due to his alleged links with the KCK since the start of October.

“Deniz is in Edirne, and I am in Kandýra. I handed over a petition to the Bakirköy Coordination Prosecutor’s Office for our situation to be rectified. I requested to be transferred next to my son in Edirne,” said Ragip Zarakolu, who is held in an F-type prison in the northwestern province of Kocaeli where dangerous convicts are kept.

“My only chagrin is that the prosecutor’s office declined to let me see [my wife] Catherine. Fortunately, the police turned out to be more merciful and enabled us to meet in the Beþiktaş courthouse on the day of the trial,” Zarakolu said in his letter, which bore a written statement that it had been reviewed by a prison committee.

Zarakolu also said he served prison time in 1972 due to a book published by his Belge Publishing House. He said his health was in good condition despite all the difficulties he had to face and described his time behind bars as “days passed under dim lights in long corridors.”

He also said he had begun to learn Kurdish because some of his fellow inmates spoke no Turkish. “I am learning Kurdish to conduct daily human conversations. I am also teaching German to my friends.”

Zarakolu was arrested on November 1 along with prominent academic Busra Ersanlý and dozens of other suspects upon the order of an Istanbul court. The KCK is the alleged urban wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is listed as a terrorist group by the United States, the European Union and Turkey.