Click to read the article in Turkish
Granted for the 15th time, the Metin Altıok Poetry Prize has been awarded to İlhan Sami Çomak's "Hayattayız Nihayet" (We are finally alive).
Chaired by Doğan Hızlan, the jury consisting of Hilmi Yavuz, Eray Canberk, Şükrü Erbaş, Ali Cengizkan and Haydar Ergülen have unanimously decided to grant the prize to imprisoned writer and poet Çomak.
As announced by the jury, the prize has been awarded to İlhan Sami Çomak "because in a world where people decay in a deadly loneliness and 'amnesia', the nature suffers in a destructive lack of love and no future remains for society other than fear and violence, he has been reconstructing the world and human with an incredible poetry, a smooth language and depth, labor, love, passion for freedom and dream for peace even though he has not been living in this world for 28 years".
Announcing the lauerate, the organizers of the poetry prize have also commemorated poet Salih Bolat, who has recently lost his life.
About İlhan Sami Çomak
While İlhan Sami Çomak was a student at İstanbul University Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1994, he was arrested on charge of "being a member of an organization." He was sentenced to capital punishment by the State Security Court in 2000, his punishment was converted into life imprisonment.
As the Court of Cassation upheld his verdict, he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which concluded that "he had not been fairly tried." He stood trial again and was given the same sentence in 2013. The Court of Cassation upheld his verdict for the second time.
The first judgement against him was given based on a statement that he made under torture. His retrial following the ECtHR verdict started years later in 2013 and the requests for his release pending trial were not accepted neither during nor after this process. The Constitutional Court rejected his request for release pending trial on October 28, 2015.
The second verdict of life sentence given by the İstanbul 4th Heavy Penal Court was also upheld by the 16th Penal Chamber of the Court of Cassation. (AÖ/SD)
.jpg)
