The Curfew after the 1980 Military Coup

The Curfew after the 1980 Military Coup is the state-imposed limit on Kemal Basmacı’s evening visits to the Keskin household after martial law began in September 1980. It forced him to leave before his longing to remain with Füsun had been satisfied, bringing the public timetable of military rule into conflict with the private rhythm of their dinners. In the novel, the curfew is both a practical restriction on movement and a recurring measure of Kemal’s inability to part from the household.

The Household’s Ordinary Time

Before the coup, Kemal’s visits followed the household’s domestic schedule rather than a strict departure hour. He first went to Çukurcuma for supper on October 23, 1976, and his last night there with Füsun and Nesibe the seamstress was August 26, 1984. Across seven years and ten months, he recorded 1,593 visits in 409 weeks: an average of four visits a week, though the pattern varied, and he never stayed away for more than ten days. The family came to expect him and kept a place for him at the table.

The evenings also had their own markers of time. A German-made wall clock in the Keskin home stood as a reminder of the outside world, but television had become the household’s practical timekeeper. At seven, before TRT’s news began, a large clock appeared on screen; Füsun and Tarık Bey checked their watches against it. Kemal often arrived around seven and left soon after the national closing ceremony around midnight. He estimated that each visit lasted about five hours, although shame made him inclined to understate how long he had stayed. Against this familiar, television-shaped night, the curfew imposed a new and much earlier boundary.

The Deadline and the Journey Home

After the 1980 Turkish Coup, martial law brought a ten o’clock curfew. Kemal therefore had to leave at a quarter to ten, before he felt he had had enough time with Füsun. The restriction did not simply shorten his evenings: the approach of departure made the remaining time harder to bear. From about half past nine he could become immobilized, unable to stand despite telling himself to get up; by twenty to ten, the panic of the countdown could become unbearable.

When he finally got downstairs, he and Çetin hurried through the dark streets and were often four or five minutes late. During the curfew’s first minutes, soldiers generally let the last stragglers racing along the avenues pass. The streets nevertheless showed the cost of everyone’s haste: Kemal and Çetin encountered cars crashed in Taksim Square, Harbiye, and Dolmabahçe, and drivers emerging to fight. The deadline was later extended to eleven, but its effect on Kemal’s evenings remained a struggle over when he could force himself to leave.

A Public Rule, a Private Loss

The curfew converted Kemal’s habitual reluctance to depart into a crisis with a fixed hour. Before military rule, he could remain until the television broadcast ended; afterward, the state’s timetable required him to break away while the household evening was still underway. The loss he emphasizes is not an abstract inconvenience but the feeling that he had been denied his due measure of Füsun. Even years later, news of the military’s displeasure with the nation could bring back, most vividly, the memory of being rushed home before he had seen enough of her.

The contrast with the family’s earlier rituals gives the rule its narrative force. The wall clock and television made time visible and repeatable; the curfew made it coercive, setting a limit that the supper table could not absorb. Ordinary evenings had seemed to gather around the continuing visits, yet a political order could suddenly dictate their ending. The curfew thus exposes how Kemal’s private sense of time depended on access to Füsun—and how painfully that dependence registered when public authority cut the visit short.