#### Emirdağ

Emirdağ

Bediuzzaman returned to Emirdağ soon after the acquittals in March of 1952, writing in a letter that much as he wanted to meet with his many friends who wished to visit him, due to his age, ill health and weakness from poison, so long as it was not essential, he no longer had the strength and could not speak much. "However", he wrote,

I tell you certainly that each part of the Risale-i Nur is a Said. Whichever part you look at you will benefit ten times more than meeting me in person, and also you will have truly met with me. [^34]

[^34]:Eşref Edip, Said Nursi, 90.

Again on his return to Emirdağ Bediuzzaman was subject to unlawful harassment, which led to a further court case. This time it was at the hands of some gendarmes and concerned his dress. One day in the month of Ramadan, which in 1952 began towards the end of May, Bediuzzaman went out of the town into the surrounding country to take some exercise. Though alone, he was followed by three gendarmes and a sergeant, who, when he was sitting alone in the hills, approached him and told him to remove his turban and put on a hat. They then forcibly took him back to Emirdağ to the police station.

As a result of this entirely arbitrary infringement of his liberty, Bediuzzaman wrote a petition to the Justice and Interior Ministries in Ankara by way of a complaint, wanting his students in Ankara to give copies also to sympathetic deputies. One of his students there sent a copy also to a newspaper printed in Samsun called Büyük Cihad. On the newspaper printing the petition, the Samsun public prosecutor opened proceedings against Bediuzzaman, and a summons arrived in Emirdağ ordering him to appear in Samsun Criminal Court. Bediuzzaman wrote a reply referring them to his lengthy and unrefuted defences of five previous cases since they were repeating the same old charges. [^35] He also obtained medical reports stating he was unfit to travel. In the meantime, on 22 November 1952, the Malatya Incident occurred, in which an attempt was made on the life of a well-known journalist, Ahmet Emin Yalman. It was blown up out of all proportion by the leftist press, and finally the government bowed to pressure and closed down Islamic newspapers and arrested many supporters of religion. Among these were the Büyük Cihad and its owner, and also Bediuzzaman's close student Mustafa Sungur, who was in Samsun and had also had an article published in the paper. Mustafa Sungur was held in Samsun

[^35]:Nursi, Emirdağ Lahikası, ii, 146-7.