Chapter Seven - Afyon

CHAPTER SEVEN

Afyon

#### Afyon Prison

Afyon Prison

Thus, Bediuzzaman and the Risale-i Nur Students entered their third School of Joseph (Medrese-i Yusufiye). And as previously they did transform it into a 'school' by persisting in writing out copies of the Risale-i Nur and the long piece Bediuzzaman wrote, Elhüccetü'z-Zehra, and themselves studying and instructing other prisoners, despite the conditions, which in their harshness, far exceeded what they had experienced in Eskişehir and Denizli.

The years of despotic Republican People's Party rule were drawing to an end; already in 1946 the Democrat Party had been founded. As though to have a final strike at religion and Islam, to which they were now having to make concessions, they inflicted on Bediuzzaman, who virtually alone of all the leading religious figures in Turkey had persistently defied them, twenty months of the most terrible imprisonment. But he survived the inhuman conditions and lived to see the virtually free printing of the Risale-i Nur under the Democrat Party and the consolidation of his students into a powerful movement.

It is clear that their imprisonment and conviction were a foregone conclusion. After the previous acquittals their enemies determined to have them convicted come what may, although this meant "being disrespectful to three major courts, slighting their honour and justice, and even insulting them." [^302] For the charges were the same. There are a number of things which point to this. Firstly, as is pointed out in one description of life in Afyon Prison, it was stated "by a Prime Minister" in the Grand National Assembly during the debates on changes to the "elastic" Article 163 of the Criminal Code with a view to making it more comprehensive and carrying heav-

[^302]:Nursi, Şualar, 291 (Eng. tr.: Rays, 370).