and tormenting me. Recently there has been the incident of the high-ranking officials here telling some people that "Said should be disposed of." Profiting from ideas like these that have been put around, my secret enemies scattered my assistants, and seizing the opportunity, poisoned me. They felt empowered by officials like them. But divine providence and preservation thwarted their conspiracy. God willing, this providence and preservation will persist and all their plans will be foiled. ∗∗∗

► (088) ◄ Part of a Conversation with the Interior Minister

Although I had not applied to them for twenty years, this petition was written addressing Hilmi [Uran] , the Interior Minister, once off and when I was angry, because he was persecuting me. It was sent to the Afyon police chief for his information. Four or five times they meaninglessly and unnecessarily harassed me. They summoned me to the police station officially and demanded: "That's not how you write; who wrote it for you?" I replied: "Application shouldn't be made to such people; I was right to keep silent for twenty years !"

Police and authorities of Emirdağ! I wrote the below conversation a year ago, then held it and did not send it. But now they are intervening and preventing my assistant from helping me, which is illegal in five respects, and are constraining and holding me under an absolute despotism in a way unheard of in the world. I am publicizing this in the hope that those who flout the law in the name of the law will act more fairly and justly.

Part of a Conversation with the Interior Minister

I have been the target of an injustice that has been unprecedented in history on the face of the earth, and cruelty and oppression that are illegal in ten respects. It is as follows:

How does it profit you to inflict the police on an extremely weak elderly seventy-one-year-old who is severely ill from being poisoned as a result of a conspiracy; is alone in piteous exile; impoverished to the extent that he had to sell his sack coat, vest, and slippers to secure his needs; a solitary recluse who for twenty-five years is able to meet with only one completely loyal person out of a thousand; an innocent man whose life and works of twenty years have been ruled by three courts and the Ankara experts' committee to be beneficial, not harmful, for the country and nation; a son of this land who performed important services in the Great War; a patriot who has striven with all his strength with his effective works to save this nation