"I'm writing these lines from my cell, but I'm not in jail, I'm a writer, you can imprison me, but you can not keep me here, like all writers I'm a magician, I can go through your walls without harm ". This ode to freedom is from "I'll never see the world again," the book Ahmet Altan wrote in the Silivri detention center in the suburbs of Istanbul.

The "magician" will have to continue to trust his imagination to bring down the walls. Released on 4 November after spending three years in prison, the 69-year-old Turkish writer and journalist was sent back to prison on 12 November, just one week after his release. An incarceration that sounds sadly as we celebrate, Friday, November 15, the International Writers Day in prison.

"He is fine"

Whoever found the strength to write his last album on slips of paper, issued slip by sheet by his lawyers, remains more combative than ever. "He's fine, he's holding up, he's laughing a lot, of course it's a hard blow to be sent back to prison, but he knows it's a political joke and he's ready to fight," he says. from France 24 his friend Yasmine Congar, director of P24, a Turkish platform for independent journalists.

Ahmet Altan was arrested in 2016, at the time of the crackdown that followed the failed coup in Turkey. During a trial in advance, he was first sentenced to life for his alleged links with the movement of the Islamic preacher, Fethullah Gülen, historical enemy of Recep Tayyip Erdogan suspected of having hatched the failed coup. In exile in the United States, Gülen denies any form of belonging of the writer - layman assumed - to his religious community.

Altan's sentence was later reduced to ten and a half years of imprisonment. After three years in prison, Turkish justice ordered his release under judicial supervision. But the prosecution appealed his release, arguing "the risk he leaves the country." The 27th Chamber of the Assize Court of Istanbul proved him right.

Refuse to keep quiet

According to Altan defenders, the subject of the appeal is misleading. "Ahmet has never intended to leave the country, all this is a political game, and what he is criticized for is refusing to keep his mouth shut," said Yasmine Congar, who was able to to visit in prison. "But for him, it is natural to write, to express himself, he writes what he thinks and thinks of what he writes, he does not regret a line."

A respected journalist and successful writer, Ahmet Altan is not at his first setbacks with the Turkish authorities. He denounced, in 1995, the war waged by the Turkish army in the Kurdish region of the country. Editor-in-chief of the newspaper Milliyet, he was then dismissed and sentenced to 20 months in prison suspended for supporting the creation of a Kurdish state. The accusation is the same when he wrote, in 1999, a declaration for the rights of the Kurds, with two other great Turkish writers, Orhan Pamuk and Yachar Kemal. In 2008, it was an article dedicated to the victims of the genocide of the Armenians who had accused him of "insulting the Turkish nation".

Barely released on November 4, Ahmet Altan took over the pen. "I was released from prison one night and was asked how I was going in. People were expecting to hear the joy of those who were experiencing their first moments of freedom after years, I was a little sad. I have left behind thousands of innocent people ... As a prisoner, you are a victim of justice, once you are gone, you become an accomplice, "he wrote in the Guardian on November 9 . And to add, "I know it's possible they'll stop me again."

Ahmet Altan knew what was waiting for him. "We knew he would return to prison from the time the prosecution appealed," said Yasmine Congar. "The procedure is illegal because Ahmet himself had launched an appeal against his conviction at first instance and his lawyers will therefore plead the unlawfulness of the proceedings before the Constitutional Court", she explains.

Writers in danger

These circumvention of Turkish law are not surprising in the context. Since the coup attempt of July 15, 2016, Turkey has intensified the hunt for media and intellectuals critical of power. "Turkey is the world's biggest prison for media professionals," Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on its website.

At least 160 writers and journalists were held in Turkish jails in 2018 believes Pen International, the writers' association that organizes the Day for writers in prison. "The fierceness against Ahmet Altan reflects the climate of terror that reigns in Turkey, the power is constantly terrorizing these writers and journalists," reacts to France 24 Ben Gorman, director of the British branch of Pen International.

According to the association, the degradation of the rights of writers is notable in the four corners of the globe. Like Ahmet Altan, many are the "wizards" to be silenced. To leave their private readers with words and desperately white pages. More than 200 writers around the world have been imprisoned, attacked or threatened in 2018. Two have been killed: Bangladeshi poet Shahzahan Bachchu and Danish Nedim Yasar.

"The situation is deteriorating for writers and journalists around the world, the pressures are always stronger," says Ben Gorman. "Nevertheless, we are still more likely to support and mobilize them for freedom of expression". Engaging people.