Prisons During Struggle for Power

As the conditions behind walls get better, existence of walls become blurred.

Courts,

Defences,

Choices,

Signatures…

Democracy’s power that cause to forget, is the hush-money that it recognises.

There is no difference between democracy and coup, military and police, barracks and parliement, king and president. State can be dictator, king and sultan without losing the quality of being democracy.

In the day of 15th July, a group of soldiers started a struggle for power in some strategic points that is seen by some as coup, and the others as a theatre. As always, people who face this struggle for power in its most bare state are the prisoners. In this struggle for power, all communication of prisoners with outside has been cut. It is informed that releases will not be made until a second order.

Diyarbakır Prison-Zülfikar Tak

Whether there is a coup, who did this coup, who opposes this coup are not the questions that needed to be asked in our opinion. Coup is always implicit to state. Every state practice in daily life, especially a non-ending coup setting on political subjects that state see as opponents, is a state of emergency. Because what makes sovereign is its ability to decide to state of exception.

If some factions are exclued, passed decisions on, whether these decisions are taken by so-called consensus or covered up by using another name does not change anything.

The sovereign is the one who decides when the public order is distrupted, on security, on death and life. The sovereign decides what is crime and not, who is criminal and how one pays for the crime. It makes people to internalise its system to an extent that, lots of people who believe the necessity of the prison, can’t imagine abolishing the place that they don’t what to be in it while criticising it. While they see a threat to themselves, they approve prison, but when they are attacked by power they start to see prisons as power’s institutions to protect itself. Yet, while political power change state institutions remain, changing power means changing criminals. Yesterday’s heroes can be today’s traitors, owner of right to kill can change in an instant.  People who have not yet faced power’s apparatus of closure, do not ever think about how existence of prisons continue in the days that will come, what the absolute power that decides the communication between in and out can do. While the laws that state enforce change, it is obvious that existence of state will remain.

For a democratic sultanate, it is not necessary to have more than one person. And in whatever way it is called, people who entirely or partly lose their rights and are kept away from political power still have lived under the roof of democracy.

Prison reformists forget one thing, and that is walls will remain and behind walls state with its unlimited authority just can do anything in any moment. This reality does not change with an increased amount of books, increased visiting times, and uncencored letters. This reality will exist as long as walls exist, guardians of state exist, weapons of gendermeries exist, that is to say as long as state exist.  Hearings, reduced sentences, change in laws do not change this reality. This is a change in the roles and lines of theatre, yet theatre continues to exist. 

Concepts like right, law are tied to sovereign’s will and can change in any instant. What makes a sovereign is the power of putting this concepts, keeping their existence and deciding to their content. Sovereign with its changing tactics, sometimes enlarge aquarium, cause to forget the greater reality with its small prices.

A democracy can continue to exist in form of militarist or pacifist, absolute or liberal, secular or conservative without ever making concessions on its functioning . That’s why although it seems pretty libertarian, democracy is like an empty bell-glass that turn to the any of the colour that it takes inside. 

As the conditions behind walls get better, existence of walls become blurred.

Courts,

Defences,

Choices,

Signatures…

Democracy’s power that cause to forget, is the hush-money that it recognises.

ABC İSTANBUL