of the time required", would be exactly the same. "The truth does not change; the truth is the truth." [^194]

[^194]:Ibid., 37-8.

Bediuzzaman expected to be hanged by this court martial, which for its evidence had relied chiefly on informers and denouncers. Indeed, he had asked the court: "The detectives now are worse than the one's before, how can their word be relied on? How can justice be built on what they say?" [^195] On learning that the court's unanimous decision was for his acquittal, Bediuzzaman expressed no gratitude, He turned and left the court on being released, then walked from Bayezid to Sultan Ahmet at the head of the large crowd that had gathered, shouting: "Long live Hell for all tyrants! Long live Hell for all tyrants!" [^196]

[^195]:Ibid., 12.

[^196]:Tarihçe, 57.

The 31st of March Incident was indeed as Bediuzzaman described it, "The Great Disaster". Whatever the CUP's role in it, it provided them with the opportunity they had been seeking. Firstly, they realized their long-held ambition to depose Sultan Abdulhamid. Immediately preceding the revolt, they had come out into the open and proclaimed themselves an official party. Then following it, they disbanded the opposition parties and a little later further reduced the powers of the Sultan, and gained tighter control over the State. The same year they introduced a number of measures that restricted freedom to a greater degree than under Abdulhamid. The Muhammadan Union was closed and disbanded; indeed, many of its leading members had met their end on the gallows of the military courts.

Bediuzzaman felt profound disillusion with Istanbul and its deceptively civilized exterior after what he had experienced in the short time he had been there. His gaze now returned to his native East. He wrote:

If civilization provides such a favourable ground for honour-destroying aggression and dissension-causing slander, cruel thoughts of revenge, satanic sophistry, and carelessness in matters of religion, let everyone witness that in place of this seat of malice known as the felicitous palace of civilization I prefer the wild nomad tents of the high mountains of Kurdistan, the place of absolute freedom... I thought that writers' conduct should be worthy of literature. But I see some ill-mannered newspapers disseminating hatred. If that is how manners should be, and if public opinion is thus confused, bear witness that I have renounced such literature. I shall have no part in it. In place of the newspapers, I shall study the heavenly bodies and tableaux of the world in the high mountains of my native land.