Muzaffer İlhan Erdost

Muzaffer İlhan Erdost (2010)

Muzaffer İlhan Erdost (born September 18, 1932 in Artova , † February 25, 2020 in Ankara ) was a Turkish writer , publisher and publicist .

Life

He was born as Muzaffer Erdost. He took the additional first name after the death of his younger brother İlhan in 1980 in the military prison. Erdost studied veterinary medicine at Ankara University and then worked for the daily Ulus from 1958 to mid-1963 . As early as 1958, he published Henri Allegs La Question as his first book with his own publishing house, Açık Oturum. In the years from 1963 to 1965 he did his military service as a veterinarian with the rank of officer candidate ( Yedek subay ) in the area around Şemdinli , in the extreme south-east of Turkey. At the request of the editor-in-chief of Ulus, he described his impressions of tribal life, customs, poverty and backwardness in a report. Later he was to revise it again and publish it in book form, the "Şemdinli Röportajı" ("The Şemdinli Reportage"). After completing his military service, he came into contact with Marxism and founded the Sol Yayınları publishing house ("Left Publications"). In 1967 and 1968 he also worked as editor-in-chief of the newspaper Pazar Postası . His writings on İkinci Yeni , a literary movement whose name was coined by Erdost, also date from this period .

In the early 1970s, after the second military coup , Erdost was sentenced to 37.5 years in prison. Erdost spent the years 1971–1974 in Ankaran prison and was released due to an amnesty. In March 1980, the politically turbulent year, Erdost was arrested again and spent some time in various prisons. He described this imprisonment under the title "Şöyle bir geçtim Cezaevlerinden".

On the evening of November 7th, a few weeks after the military coup in Turkey in 1980 , Muzaffer Erdost was arrested again and his younger brother İlhan with him. İlhan died that same day as a result of the beatings in prison. Since then, Muzaffer has also carried his younger brother's first name.

In 1996 he came into conflict with the judiciary again because of his publications. His Üç Sivas was banned. A court first sentenced Erdost to a heavy fine, which was later waived.

Erdost wrote essays, poems, reviews, reports, diaries in letter form (İlhan'a Mektuplar, “Letters to İlhan”) and analyzes such as “The production conditions of the tribes in Şemdinli”. Many of his writings are ideologically influenced by Marxism. He was also co-founder and, until recently, chairman of the Turkish human rights organization “Türkiye İnsan Hakları Kurumu Vakfı” (TİHAK). Erdost died in February 2020 after a long illness at the age of 87 and was buried in the Karşıyaka cemetery next to his wife Rana Erdost, who also died in 2013, who was also a publicist.

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• Cumhuriyet November 7, 1980