The Period of Martial Law and Curfew after Turkey’s 1980 Coup

The Period of Martial Law and Curfew after Turkey’s 1980 Coup imposes official political time on the private routine Kemal has built around visiting Füsun and her family. A ten o’clock deadline forces him to leave before his longing is satisfied; the journey home becomes a hurried passage through emptied streets, and the curfew’s ordinary measure of time registers, for him, as a measure of how little he has been allowed to see Füsun.

Background and the Household’s Rhythms

Kemal’s visits to the Keskin household had become a sustained routine well before the coup. Between his first supper there on October 23, 1976, and his last night in Çukurcuma on August 26, 1984, he made 1,593 visits across 2,864 days. He went about four times a week on average, usually arriving around seven in the evening and leaving around midnight. The family had come to expect him, and the place at the table was kept without a formal invitation.

Inside the house, different clocks marked different kinds of time. The German-made wall clock, with its wooden and glass case, pendulum, and chime, stood as a reminder of the continuity of the outside world. But the television had become the household’s practical timekeeper. At seven, the large clock shown on screen before the news prompted Füsun and her father, Tarık Bey, to check their watches. The nightly broadcast and its closing ceremony helped give the dinners their recurring shape, while the wall clock’s chime sometimes sounded most warmly to Kemal during a sleepless night.

The Curfew Reshapes the Visits

In September 1980, four years into the visits, another military coup brought martial law and an initial ten o’clock curfew. Kemal had to leave the Keskin home at a quarter to ten, well before he felt he had seen enough of Füsun. A routine that had once carried him from the evening news toward midnight was abruptly shortened by a public deadline. The curfew was later extended to eleven, but its first, earlier limit left the strongest imprint on his account of being forced away.

The restriction did not cure Kemal’s inability to make himself leave. Instead, the approaching deadline intensified it. From half past nine he could become immobilized, repeating an urgent command to himself without standing; by twenty to ten, the countdown could make his panic almost unbearable. When he finally reached the Chevrolet, he and Çetin would worry about getting home in time. They were invariably four or five minutes late, though soldiers did not stop the last stragglers rushing along the avenues during those first minutes of curfew.

The Race Home and Its Consequences

The journey made the curfew visible in the city’s traffic and danger. Kemal and Çetin passed through dark, rapidly emptying streets and saw cars crashed in Taksim Square, Harbiye, and Dolmabahçe as drivers hurried to beat the deadline. The collisions could provoke further violence: drivers emerged to pummel one another. One night a drunken man got out of a Plymouth with his dog while the car’s exhaust still smoked; another remembered collision left a taxi radiator steaming heavily. Such scenes give the drive home a disorderly counterpoint to the regulated hour imposed by martial law.

Even when Kemal reached home safely, the evening’s forced ending followed him. He would pour himself one last raki before bed and pray to return to normal life, while remaining unsure whether he truly wanted that prayer answered. The curfew had not simply shortened his visits; by turning departure into a frantic obligation, it sharpened his sense that the time he had with Füsun was insufficient. Years later, reports of military displeasure with the state of the nation still brought back, most vividly, the memory of being hurried home before he had received what he considered his due measure of Füsun.

Public Time and Private Longing

The period’s force in Kemal’s story lies in the collision between state-imposed schedules and intimate repetition. The household’s television, the recurring supper hour, the clock on the wall, and the curfew all organize time, but not toward the same end. The broadcast and dinner routine sustain an evening in which Kemal can sit near Füsun; the curfew cuts that evening short and makes the streets themselves part of the separation.

The coup therefore enters the narrative not only as political history but as an interruption to the bodily habits of waiting, sitting, and finally leaving. The clock’s deadline cannot resolve Kemal’s attachment or restore him to ordinary life. It only gives his inability to depart a sharper edge: public authority sends him home, while his private sense of time insists that the visit has ended too soon.