ELVAN ALPAY’S heart leapt at the news. It was January 11th and Turkey’s constitutional court had just ordered the release of Mrs Alpay’s father, Sahin, as well as another writer, from pre-trial detention. One of over a hundred journalists locked up in Turkey, Mr Alpay had been arrested on farcical terror charges in the summer of 2016, two weeks after a violent, abortive coup. He is 73 and faces a triple life sentence.
Accompanied by her mother and a few friends, Mrs Alpay drove to the prison where her father had been held, to greet him in person. She never got the chance. As she waited by the prison gates, word came that, in a move with no legal precedent (or indeed basis), a lower court had rejected the constitutional court’s verdict, and Mr Alpay would remain behind bars. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government applauded the gambit. Without a trace of irony, the deputy prime minister accused the constitutional court of flouting the constitution. Mrs Alpay says she was crushed, but not wholly surprised. “When things don’t...Continue reading
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