The last time I saw Turhan Selçuk (88) was at a dinner at his brother İlhan Selçuk's house in 1982 that I attended with my boss Doğan Hızlan.

Turhan  Ağabey  came to dinner with his daughter Aslı Selçuk. I don't recall if his wife Füruzan was there. He loved his daughter Aslı very much. There were six of us that evening at İlhan Ağabey's house. Aslı was a college student at the time, majoring in cinematography, and I was working as an editorial cartoonist for Cumhuriyet.

This morning I received an email from Doğan Hızlan. Doğan Ağabey wrote that the funeral will take place at Cumhuriyet headquarters on Saturday at 2 pm. I will try to attend. He will be buried at Hacı Bektaş on Sunday.

On an equally sad note Doğan Bey also mentioned that İlhan Ağabey (85) recently had heart surgery and then a stroke following the surgery. They admitted him back to the hospital last night where he is in intensive care.

Turhan Selçuk was recently acquitted of all charges in a court case opened by conservative religious groups in Turkey regarding one of his editorial cartoons that appeared in Cumhuriyet.

The cartoon shows a female pig in "Hijab" (the type of head covering traditionally worn by Muslim women). In the background the cartoon shows an arrow to the E.U. (European Union).

Similar to Jewish traditions, Muslims are not supposed to eat pork.

My Early Years As a Newspaper Journalist
I started my journalism career in Nadir Nadi's Cumhuriyet, where Berin Nadi would visit the paper and her husband once a week in his third floor office, which was next to İlhan Selçuk and Oktay Akbal's offices. Memed Fuat shared a small room with Doğan Hızlan. I brought Yaşar Kemal his tea as soon as he walked in the building. I was in Orhan Kemal's house in Besiktas in 1982 with six others for dinner when the jury opened the envelope and read the name of this young author whom they had unanimously declared the winner of the 1983 Orhan Kemal Novel Prize. Refik Durbas and many legendary authors and poets have worked as copy editors on the second floor. I carried Ara Güler's camera equipment as he suddenly jumped from the cab, with his famous Leica camera in hand, to chase a shot in flood water up to his knees outside the İnönü Stadium. When Alfred Hitchcock died, Atilla Dorsay was in Antalya with a German tourist group and, without email or Blackberry, I ended up writing the breaking news story. I enjoyed dinners in the homes of Selim İleri, Yıldız Kenter, and Cemal Süreya. Cumhuriyet's editor-in-chief Oktay Kurtböke often walked outside the gates and personally beat the crap out of a few extreme right wing protesters who tried to picket the paper. Uğur Mumcu was 51 when he was gunned down. He would have been 68 if he were alive, and he would still have many loyal readers today. (continued...)