Selçuk’gâh

Atty. Afşin HATİPOĞLU

Is it possible for a prisoner to have had 4,443 meetings with 900 different lawyers over 2,808 days, and to have read 2,912 books in the remaining time? Yes, it turns out it is. I met this lawyer and had a conversation with him. Last week, I called the charming anarchist of the Istanbul Bar Association, TBB Board Member Atty. Kemal Aytaç. I said, “Kemal, my friend, I want to write about my impressions by interviewing prominent figures who are in prison. There is almost no convict you don’t know. Could you help me with this?” The names he gave me were the same ones I had in mind. With Aytaç’s referral, I entered Silivri and wrote my first lines in my notebook next to a colleague.

Smiling eyes, dark skin, blackish hair, and a mustache left over from Perestroika that gives authority to his entire expression. He is an honorary member of the Paris and Barcelona bar associations and the former President of the Progressive Lawyers Association (ÇHD), Selçuk Kozağaçlı. He welcomed me quite sincerely. After the initial pleasantries, we entered into a prison conversation. He opened the notebook he had brought with him. He began to read the numbers of visitors and the figures regarding his days of captivity. His last sentence was like a signature. He said he had granted authorization to 2,400 lawyers in a single power of attorney. There are dozens of bar associations in Turkey that do not have this many lawyers in total. What could be the reason for this extraordinary interest shown in a lawyer convicted in the DHKP-C case? This was, in a way, the fundamental question that led me to Kozağaçlı. How does a Yörük, Sunni district governor’s son from Burdur come to be accused of membership in a terrorist organization unrelated to his origins? When he could have been a Public Prosecutor the moment he combined his Ankara Law degree with his background, how did he end up at the top of the prosecutors’ hate list?

When we rewind the film, we see that the sequence where Selçuk Kozağaçlı stepped onto the stage for the revolutionary left was the Dev-Sol case. This file, which reached the statute of limitations in the wake of hundreds of lost folders with its 1,243 defendants, touched Kozağaçlı from two angles. One was Dursun Karataş and the other was the People’s Law Office (Halkın Hukuk Bürosu). Kozağaçlı served as Dursun Karataş’s lawyer for many years. He didn’t stop there; he became one of the most active revolutionary lawyers in Ankara on behalf of the People’s Law Office. Whoever the regime disliked, Kozağaçlı stood by them. With the turn of the millennium, he began to be subjected to terrorism charges. Governments in Turkey always equate lawyers with their clients. They think they will reach their goal by putting pressure on the lawyer. The point that is overlooked is this: Leaders of organizations conducting terrorist activities on a global scale are too experienced to put their own tails in the hands of their lawyers.

Kozağaçlı, who defines himself as a Marxist and Leninist and does not accept the right to property, the right to inheritance, or labor contracts, became the President of the Progressive Lawyers Association during the years he walked without lowering his left fist. Kozağaçlı, who says, “I am a continuation of the Halit Çelenk and Niyazi Ağırnaslı school,” adds, “Mehmet Uçum was also a member of mine.” What an association, with its president imprisoned for terrorism and its member being the palace’s chief legal advisor!

A terrorism investigation was opened against Selçuk Kozağaçlı in 2013. Then, another case was opened from the same file in 2017. Kozağaçlı was arrested in 2017. He remained imprisoned until his 10 hours of freedom in 2025. He was arrested again, with the justification that “we made a wrong decision!” Stating that he encountered interesting names during his eight years of prison life, Selçuk Kozağaçlı draws attention to Halis Bayancuk, whom he calls “a very intelligent man” and “the greatest AKP opponent I have ever seen,” and Ramazan Akgün, whom he claims fabricated evidence to frame him. As our conversation continued, he greeted a prisoner who came to the next room and they laughed from a distance. Pointing to his chest, he said to me, “His wife gave me this shirt.” Even in prison, life goes on.

Lawyers chasing prison after him, a name that becomes a slogan in every protest, masses he indoctrinated from prison like a Gramsci… On the other hand, a state that considers him a part of a ruthless terrorist organization like the DHKP-C. So, what did Selçuk Kozağaçlı say about all these discussions held over him and all the topics talked about in the country? I asked a lot. I listened to him by compiling the parts that point to the essence of his ideas.

“I believe that weapons are a part of the political sphere. If you want to change the order, you cannot make a revolution without using weapons against the armed forces of the order. If the PKK had not waged an armed struggle, would this commission have been established today? Until 95/96, I did not exclude the PKK’s struggle. Because their claims pointed to a Marxist and Leninist structure based on class struggle. It was romantic and revolutionary. What Öcalan did is not a small feat. İbrahim Kaypakkaya (TKP-ML, TİKKO) toured the region five years before Öcalan with similar claims but did not get results. Öcalan was someone close to the Mahir Çayan line (THKP-C). The DHKP-C also comes from this branch. There was also the Deniz Gezmiş school (THKO). The main line we call revolutionary left actually grew out of these three. However, the PKK separated from the class struggle.

I don’t think human life has a meaning on its own. You’ve died, you’ve lived, you’ve gone to prison; these don’t matter. What matters is how you live life, what you add to life. I am a Marxist and Leninist living on the basis of class struggle. In this sense, I do not accept identity politics either.

We cannot solve the definition of Turkishness in the constitution by writing Kurdish in the constitution. I am also against the Kurds establishing a separate state. As if the US bases in Turkey, the colonial order, and the landlord system weren’t enough, are we going to establish a Kurdistan and move them there too? Peoples should, of course, use their cultural rights.

Perhaps if Selahattin were outside, other things could be discussed. We were in the same year at Ankara Law. But he also stands on a threshold. If he crosses the threshold, he will be a Kurdish people’s leader; if he cannot cross the threshold, he will live an average life. These discussions cannot be held without considering regional balances. Capitalism is collapsing. We must embrace the peoples and wage a class struggle. Regional wars are not ending. If capitalism were strong and capital had reached its goal, these wars would not be happening. Of course, there are many details to these issues. It is not that simple.”

The guard opened the door and took Selçuk Kozağaçlı. We thanked each other and said goodbye. The traces of a personal revolution remained on me. A friend of Kozağaçlı, who grew up in a family completely unrelated to the members of the organization he is accused of, had said: “Selçuk is not from that mold!” But with such a belief, he felt himself within the history of revolutions. I do not agree with almost any of the ideas he defends, but he has built his mind with such dedication that you cannot help but respect Kozağaçlı. Because there are thousands who turn the dungeons he lies in into a shrine, a qibla, a prayer place, and a Selçuk’gâh. There are people who believe that by touching its stones and soil, he has made a revolutionary uprising.

Changing the order through armed struggle, abolishing the right to inheritance, looking at humans only on a class basis… For the sake of equality of arms, I am saving my objections to these ideas for Selçuk Kozağaçlı’s freedom.