Nazım Hikmet, Orhan Kemal, Kemal Tahir, Sevgi Soysal, Atilla İlhan, et al. Intellectuals and artists have spent considerable time in Turkish jails, and this program may well produce the next big writer or poet to come out of a Turkish prison. But that will only be a much welcomed side effect. The main benefit of this program will come through better integration of those `inside` and `outside`, linking the prisons with society outside, and the better penetration on the part of the civil society to the secluded life in prisons. Its more important contribution will be in improving the actual conditions of the prisons in Turkey, ensuring that prisoners are deprived only of their freedom of movement, and that they do not suffer any further harm other than the one caused by their isolation from society.

Funded by the European Commission European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights and the European Cultural Foundation, and executed in collaboration with the Turkish Ministry of Justice General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Houses, Anadolu Kültür`s Defortifying the Prisons Program has received the support of Metis Yayıncılık, Kanat Kitap, PEN International, PEN Sweden Writers in Prison Committee and PEN Turkey Writers in Prison Committee.

The poems, caricatures, and writings collected from this effort have been published in several volumes and distributed on a national level. A letter-writing initiative has linked the prisoners with authors. Inmates have attended concerts, film screenings, and exhibitions, followed by discussions with the artists. Judges and detention officers have joined inmates in painting, sculpture, and theater Workshops.

Prison works still continue under the coordination of CISST.