TORTURED, IMPRISONED, ACQUITTED 4 TIMES: THE TRUE STORY OF PINAR SELEK
Pinar Selek recounts torture, prison and twenty-eight years of legal battle in Turkey.
What is said in the show
Pinar Selek, sociologist and writer teaching at the Université Côte d'Azur, looks back on her research conducted in the 1990s on Kurdish movements, in a context of total war in which more than 6,000 villages were burned. Arrested in 1998, her notebooks and floppy disks confiscated, she refused under torture to reveal her sources and the identities of her contacts. She describes the physical after-effects: electric shock to the brain, a broken back, an inability to move her fingers for eight months. Accused of terrorism, she faced a demand for the death penalty. Acquitted four times by judges, the Court of Cassation overturned each verdict. She left Turkey in 2009, settled in France and continued to publish. Her mother and father supported her throughout this ordeal. She presents her book Lever la tête as an act of resistance. The Pile ou Face segment explores her fears, her practical regrets about securing her data and her attachment to the Mediterranean as an identity space beyond political borders.
Chapters
- 0:00Intro
- 0:18The story of Pinar Selek
- 1:20Investigating the Kurdish resistance
- 4:36Surviving torture
- 7:5928 years of legal battle
- 12:07The Pile ou Face game
- 12:471st toss - Fear
- 13:302nd toss - Starting over
Key moments
« They even gave me electric shocks to the brain. My entire back was broken. I couldn't move my fingers for about 8 months. »
Pinar Selek · at 0:00
« One more minute, one more minute. And in my head I kept telling myself that if I talk, they already know. So I was rationalizing. »
Pinar Selek · at 4:45
« What fear has never left me? Being on the wrong side, making others suffer, even over something small. »
Pinar Selek · at 12:49
« I am Mediterranean. My flag is the eggplant, the olive oil, the lemon and the sea. »
Pinar Selek · at 17:14
« It's not a book, it's an act of resistance. I gave life to something they wanted to kill. »
Pinar Selek · at 11:21