To the City by Alexander Christie-Miller

Author:Alexander Christie-Miller [Christie-Miller, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2024-01-12T17:00:00+00:00

Vatan Caddesi – ‘Homeland Avenue’ – was a broad, arrow-straight thoroughfare cut into the heart of the old city between the Sulukule and Topkapı gates. The avenue had been built in the 1950s by Prime Minister Adnan Menderes – it was later renamed in his honour but the original name had somehow stuck – and for a time it was used for official processions and celebrations associated with the Conquest, as if the clearing and opening of this broad stretch of the urban fabric represented another triumph over the past. The Police Security Directorate was part of a large complex of state buildings about six hundred metres from the walls. It was the main police department for Istanbul, and the place where detainees from across the city would be taken and processed.

It was about two in the morning when Tülay Açıkkollu approached the building with her elder brother to deliver her husband’s insulin and a clean set of clothes. Even though it was nearly two weeks after the coup, there were still demonstrators camped outside, chanting slogans against the coup suspects held within. Her brother was worried that if she went into the building and had to show her ID they would arrest her too, so she waited outside while he went in alone. The crowd was in a mood that was both celebratory and angry, and the police had set up a barricade to keep the demonstrators at a distance. On the areas of grass outside abutting the road people were cooking barbecues, holding banners and shouting slogans denouncing the traitors inside. Overwhelmed at the scenes around her, Tülay broke down in tears, and a plain clothes police officer approached her, gave her water, and made her sit down. He asked her if her husband was detained inside and then asked if he was a soldier or a police officer. ‘Just a teacher,’ she replied, and he told her that in that case she shouldn’t worry as they would probably just take his statement and release him.

At one point while she was waiting, she watched a frail old man approach the police at the barricades and ask to speak to a ‘superior’. At first they tried to brush him off but he was insistent, and someone was found. ‘Let me in, I have names to report,’ he announced. It was a moment that appalled Tülay. ‘It shocked me to my core. Who were those people? Were they his neighbours, his friends, his family?’

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