Ahmet Telli's Letter to Kozağaçlı, and Justice That Came Late

In the Hope of Meeting on Better Days: The Story of a Letter and a Lawlessness

October 13, 2026 at 08:10 AM18 min readAuthor: Oğuz Demirkapı

Days of Friendship: Ahmet Telli's Letter to Kozağaçlı, and Justice That Came Late

To young comrades, on a poet's last letter, a lawyer's sentence that does not end, and the turning of law into a score sheet

Dear young comrades,

On 3 June 2026 Ahmet Telli wrote a letter to Selçuk Kozağaçlı in Silivri. On 10 July he left us. The letter reached Kozağaçlı ten days after the poet's death. This article was written to share that letter with you, to say what these two people mean for this country, and to explain why a letter stayed on the road for weeks, and why a lawyer is still inside even though his sentence has run its course.

First a short summary, then the detail.

Summary: in five sentences

The letter. Telli writes that he has come to the end of chemotherapy and is on the way to recovery; he says that Kozağaçlı was on his mind when he named his last book of poems Arkadaşlık Günleriydi; he embraces him in the hope of "meeting on better days". The letter passed the prison inspection weeks later and reached its address after the poet had died (BirGün, bianet).
Ahmet Telli. A master of socialist-realist poetry, arrested and tortured after 12 September, dismissed from teaching, sentenced in 2023 for "terrorist propaganda" because of a poem: the voice that turned a generation's grief into revolt.
Selçuk Kozağaçlı. Lawyer for the families of the miners who died at Soma, honorary president of the ÇHD; a prisoner since 2017. He was released on 16 April 2025 and taken back before twenty-four hours were up. In December 2025 he was kept inside again, on the grounds that he was "not in a condition to integrate with society".
The lawlessness. Kozağaçlı's freedom no longer depends on a court judgment, but on a "progress score" whose criteria are unclear. The revolutionary lawyer who will not declare repentance is not counted as being of "good conduct"; Ogün Samast, who held a knife to a guard's throat, was.
The lesson. The delayed letter and the sentence that does not end are products of the same apparatus: the state wants to punish not the body, but the bond. Protecting that bond, that is, organising friendship, is today's most concrete political task.

The letter

The letter's journey

Date	What happened
3 June 2026	Ahmet Telli writes the letter and sends it to Silivri (Marmara Prison).
June–July 2026	The letter waits under the prison administration's inspection.
10 July 2026	Ahmet Telli dies at the age of 79 (Euronews).
~20 July 2026	The letter is delivered to Kozağaçlı, ten days after the death.
July 2026	The letter and Kozağaçlı's reply are shared with the public in a post made in Kozağaçlı's name.

The text of the letter

From Ahmet Telli to Selçuk Kozağaçlı 3 June 2026 — to Silivri, Marmara Prison

Brother Selçuk Kozağaçlı,

You were at the back of my mind when I gave my last book of poems the name Arkadaşlık Günleriydi, and you will always be there. Of course we are right... You defend life from in there, and we try to be worthy of you. I embrace you warmly, in the hope of meeting on better days. My illness is on the way to recovery. I will take the last chemotherapy, and then it will continue with a targeted drug.

With love, with greetings.

Ahmet Telli_

The letter passed the prison inspection weeks later and reached its address in July 2026, ten days after the poet's death. It was shared with the public in a post made in Kozağaçlı's name.

Source — the full text of the letter and Kozağaçlı's reply: BirGün · bianet · Velev

What is in the letter?

The letter is short and warm. It says three things:

The body. Telli writes that his illness is improving, that he will take the last chemotherapy, and that treatment will then continue with a "targeted drug". He is writing the letter not as a farewell, but as a promise to meet.
Friendship. He says that he kept Kozağaçlı in mind when he named his last book of poems Arkadaşlık Günleriydi, and that he will always be there. He adds that his friends are trying to be worthy of the way Kozağaçlı defends life.
Hope. The letter closes with the sentence "I embrace you warmly, in the hope of meeting on better days."

Kozağaçlı's reply

In his reply Kozağaçlı names a bitter fact: in prison, the news that a friend is "well" often arrives after the news of their death. But he ties the mourning to the struggle. He remembers Telli's legacy with the image of a "divan", referring to the title of his collected poems (Veda Divanı); he says this legacy will multiply as long as the struggle continues, and that they will win (bianet).

Do not miss a small thing here: the man in the cell is not consoling the man who died outside. He is giving a task to those outside. That is the political form of mourning.

Ahmet Telli: the voice that turned grief into revolt

We told Telli in detail, after his death, in the article "From Memory to Praxis, a Lifetime: Understanding the Revolutionary Subject After Ahmet Telli" (12 July 2026). In that piece we read Telli's prison experience through Marx's first thesis on Feuerbach, and we discussed "knowledge being produced not in the room but at the point of collision", the idea, drawing on Vygotsky, that aesthetics is a class education of feeling, and the revolutionary's death being "dialectically overcome" by turning into a collective will. We are building this article on that one. Here we will only recall the frame needed to understand the letter.

A short chronology

Year	What happened
1946	Born on 2 December in Eskipazar, Çankırı (today Karabük).
1960s	The teacher-training schools that carried the legacy of the village institutes (Hasanoğlan, Pazarören), then Gazi Education. Primary school, then teaching literature.
1979–80	First books: Yangın Yılları, Hüznün İsyan Olur (the 1980 Ömer Faruk Toprak Prize).
After 12 September	Arrested by the martial-law command, tortured, dismissed from teaching. Sentenced under Article 142 for an essay on Cegerxwîn.
1982	The Yazko Poetry Encouragement Prize, for Saklı Kalan.
1993	Returns to teaching by court order, and retires.
2011	The Golden Orange Poetry Prize, for Nida.
2020	The PEN Turkey Poetry Prize.
2023	Ten months for "terrorist propaganda" at Ankara 26th Heavy Penal Court, for a poem he read from Dövüşen Anlatsın and a press statement in 2017; announcement of the verdict is deferred (bianet).
2026	Dies on 10 July.

Source: bianet, "Who is Ahmet Telli?".

What he is worth to Turkey

First, he is a bridge between generations. Telli belongs to the second generation of socialist-realist poetry after 1960. He carried the line that runs from Nâzım to Ahmed Arif into the language of the generation crushed by 12 September. The 78ers grew up on his lines; and at the end of his life, at the head of the Revolutionary 78ers Federation, he tried to organise that generation's memory.

Second, he politicises grief. The title Hüznün İsyan Olur is a programme on its own: it does not shut the personal pain born of defeat into the private sphere. It turns it into a common anger, a common action. While most poetry after 12 September turned inward, Telli's poetry looked outward.

Third, he is proof that the state is afraid of poetry. He was prosecuted in 1980 for an essay, and in 2023 for a poem. Forty years apart, the same state treated the same man's words as evidence of a crime. This continuity is the summary of a country whose regimes change and whose apparatus does not.

Fourth, he is a teacher. Someone who came from the teacher-training schools, who did not stop standing in front of his students, and who, once dismissed, went on teaching from inside writing. A living example of what a people's intellectual is.

Selçuk Kozağaçlı: the lawyer who stood with the dead

Who is he?

Kozağaçlı is a lawyer at the People's Law Office and was general president of the Progressive Lawyers' Association (ÇHD); today he is its honorary president. The ÇHD was closed in November 2016 by a state-of-emergency decree. The place we know Kozağaçlı from most is Soma: he took on the representation of the families in the massacre in which 301 miners were killed (Front Line Defenders).

This detail matters, young comrades. The company accused in the Soma case was a capital intertwined with the state. The lawyer who followed the case took the death in the mine out of being a "fate" and carried it into the courtroom as a class crime. The state's later imprisonment of this lawyer as a "member of a terrorist organisation" is not outside this story. It is its continuation.

Chronology of the case

Date	What happened
8 November 2017	Detained on his way to a meeting with bar presidents; begins a hunger strike.
13 November 2017	Arrested on the allegation of DHKP-C membership; held in isolation in Silivri.
September 2018	The court releases the lawyers; the prosecutor objects; the same court reverses its decision, and 12 lawyers, including Kozağaçlı, are arrested again. (The first "release, then reversal" experience.)
January–March 2019	A hunger strike, with the lawyers, against the violations in the trial.
March 2019	Istanbul 37th Heavy Penal Court: 11 years and 3 months.
November 2022	12 years in the retrial; a total of 146 years and 7 months in the ÇHD case (Cumhuriyet).
September 2023	Acquitted in the "scenario" case for lack of evidence.
April 2024	The Court of Cassation upholds the sentence, reducing it to 10 years and 15 months.
February 2025	The right to supervised release arises. The Administration and Observation Board says "no good conduct"; the progress score is 37.75 (the threshold is 40).
16 April 2025	The board unanimously decides on conditional release; the enforcement judge approves; Kozağaçlı is released.
17 April 2025	The prosecution objects; the same enforcement judge who had ordered the release the day before lifts the decision; Kozağaçlı is taken back to prison (soL, Fayn).
30 December 2025	The board: "not in a condition to integrate with society." The score this time is 28.5. The next review is put off six months, to 30 June 2026 (Medyascope).
July 2026	Still in Silivri; he receives Telli's letter after the news of the death.
December 2027	The date on which the sentence is expected to expire completely.

Understanding the lawlessness: the score sheet, repentance, and the post office

Now let us come to the heart of it. What was done to Kozağaçlı is not a "judicial error". It is a method. Let us open this method piece by piece.

From the court to the board: handing the judiciary to the administration

Conditional release is a person's completing outside, once a certain part of the sentence has been served in good conduct. Normally this is a right that can be calculated. But in recent years the assessment of "good conduct" has been tied to the Administration and Observation Board, made up of the prison director and staff, and to the progress score it prepares.

The result is this: the real length of a sentence given by a judge after years of trial is now set by a form an administrative board fills in every six months. Kozağaçlı's score came out low because, on account of health problems, he did not join sports activities, and because he could not join activities during the pandemic (T24, Gökçer Tahincioğlu). A reprimand he received for not accepting the institution's identity card, and a three-day hunger strike he held against pit-type prisons, pulled the score down further.

A lawyer's freedom, then, is calculated according to whether he plays volleyball in prison, and whether he goes on defending rights inside the cell too. The criteria are not public; the method of calculation is not explained. In the words of Ceren Yılmaz, president of the ÇHD's Ankara branch, this is a practice that "makes a mockery of human reason".

The real criterion: repentance

Among the grounds of the prosecution's objection in April 2025 is this sentence: that Kozağaçlı has "no concrete statement or conduct showing that he has left the organisation." That is the real criterion behind the score sheet.

Two things are happening at once here:

Kozağaçlı never accepted membership of an organisation. He is being asked to declare that he has left a membership he did not accept. This is the roundabout way of forcing a confession.
The sentence is being extended not for what he did, but for what he is: for continuing to remain a revolutionary lawyer.

In September 2026 the decision given to Behiç Aşçı, from the same office, made this naked: Aşçı passed the threshold with 44.06 points, and had had no disciplinary penalty for a year. The board still said he was "not of good conduct"; as its reason it wrote that his not receiving a disciplinary penalty stemmed from the approach of the release date, and that his compliance "served organisational aims" (Medyascope).

If your score is low, you are punished; if your score is high, you are counted a "tactician" who behaved in order to raise the score. Kafka could not have written it better.

A double standard: whose "good conduct"?

	Ogün Samast	Selçuk Kozağaçlı
Why inside?	Killing Hrant Dink	"Organisation membership" via his work as a lawyer
Conduct in prison	In 2017 he held a knife to a guard's throat and bit another's finger; he was punished for it as well	No act of violence; he refused the institution's identity card and held a hunger strike
The board's decision	Found to be of "good conduct", released in November 2023	Below the threshold; released, and taken back within 24 hours
Prosecution's objection	None	Yes, the next day
The decisive difference	His act was not counted as "activity of a terrorist organisation"	No "statement that he has left the organisation"

Source: T24.

This table tells us more than "the law is not applied equally to everyone". The state sees violence that moves along its own ideological line as a matter of discipline, and the idea that objects to its order as a matter of security. Law here is not a neutral referee. It is the technical language of class and power relations.

The post office is an instrument of punishment too

It can look like a small detail that Telli's letter waited for weeks. It is not.

In prisons, letters pass through "reading" and inspection; if the content is found "objectionable", they are delayed, withheld, or destroyed. In theory this inspection is for security. In practice, as we have seen with our own eyes, a few lines of tenderness that a poet struggling with a fatal illness writes to his friend can arrive after the poet's death.

What is punished here is not the body. It is the bond. Isolation, restrictions on visits, bans on correspondence, the delayed letter: all of them aim to cut the prisoner off from the world outside, and the world outside off from the prisoner. Remember that one of the grounds that lowered Kozağaçlı's score was "corresponding with detainees and convicts". The state both delays the letter and counts the writing of letters as an element of the offence.

This is why the name Telli gave his book is a political answer: Arkadaşlık Günleriydi. Naming the thing power is trying to tear apart.

A class reading: why the lawyers?

Why does a state imprison its lawyers? Because the lawyer is the last bridge between the law and the people.

At Soma the miner's family stands against the company and the state not alone, but with a lawyer.
The sacked worker, the young person subjected to police violence, the poor person whose house is demolished, can enter the language of law only with a lawyer.
When the people's lawyer is imprisoned, the message is given not only to him but to all his colleagues: "If you take these cases, your turn will come too."

Keeping Kozağaçlı inside, then, is narrowing the people's access to law. Lawlessness here is not a side effect. It is the function: turning law into a door that is open for capital and the state, and closed for labourers.

This is not only Kozağaçlı

The same pattern repeats in Can Atalay's not being released despite Constitutional Court rulings, in Selçuk Mızraklı's years of captivity, and in the "no good conduct" decision for Behiç Aşçı. Can Atalay's letter to Kozağaçlı, "We will get past this arbitrariness" (Gazikent27), is for that reason a diagnosis as much as a call to solidarity: arbitrariness has become not the exception, but the rule.

Putting the two side by side

	Ahmet Telli	Selçuk Kozağaçlı
Instrument	Poetry	Law
Whom he addresses	The feeling of a defeated generation	The case of a crushed class
The state's answer	Torture and dismissal in 1980, a sentence for a poem in 2023	Prison since 2017, a punishment that does not end
The shared offence	Using words on the people's side	Using law on the people's side
What he left	Hüznün İsyan Olur, Dövüşen Anlatsın, Veda Divanı	The Soma file, the tradition of revolutionary lawyering
What he gave the other	The name of a book: Arkadaşlık Günleriydi	The continuation of a sentence: as long as the struggle goes on, the poet lives too

One drew aesthetics, the other law, to the people's side. The state struck both from the same place: they took a side. Bourgeois ideology tells us that art and law are "neutral". The lives of Telli and Kozağaçlı show that this neutrality is a curtain that hides only the ruler's side.

Concrete tasks for young comrades

Write letters. Writing to political prisoners is both the simplest and the most effective solidarity. A letter may arrive late; a letter that is never written never arrives. Follow the address lists of the structures in solidarity with prisoners.
Follow the hearings and the decisions. Follow the decisions of the Administration and Observation Board and the objections to the enforcement judge, and record them. Arbitrariness becomes something that can be exposed once it is documented.
Make the score sheet public. The explanation of the progress score's criteria, and the requirement that board decisions be reasoned and open to review, should be raised as a legal demand. Take it to the bar associations, the law faculties, the professional organisations.
Read Telli, and have him read. Begin with Hüznün İsyan Olur and Dövüşen Anlatsın. In reading groups, discuss the poetry not only as aesthetics, but together with the historical conditions in which it was written.
Do not leave the people's lawyers alone. Go to the hearings of the lawyers who take workers' cases and workplace-death cases. In a courtroom where the lawyer is not alone, the judge cannot decide alone either.
Organise memory. As Telli did in his last years: record the generations' testimony, and join oral-history work. What is made forgotten is repeated.

Dear comrades,

A month before his death, a poet wrote to his friend in prison, "I am getting better, let us meet on better days." The state's post office delivered that sentence after the poet had died. The state's board also kept that friend inside, even though his sentence had run its course, saying he "cannot integrate with society".

Which of them is more foreign to society, young comrades: the one who acted as lawyer for the family of the miner who died at Soma, or the one who held a poet's letter for weeks?

Telli's letter arrived late, but it arrived. It is in your hands now. Taking it as far as Kozağaçlı's door, turning Arkadaşlık Günleriydi into days that will be lived outside the cell, is our work.

In the hope of meeting on better days.

Sources

The letter and the reply

Ahmet Telli

Selçuk Kozağaçlı and the law of sentence enforcement

Topics:Law, State and Politics Labour and Organising Culture, Art and Memory

Tags:#literature #memorial #law #judiciary #repression #class #organising #mining