04 Jul 19 | Monitoring and Advocating Coverage, News and features, Turkey
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]This article is part of an ongoing series exploring the issues raised by Index on Censorship’s Monitoring and Advocating for Media Freedom project.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Istanbul has been controlled by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) since 1994, when Erdoğan was first elected mayor of the city. Erdoğan has repeatedly stated that, “Whoever wins Istanbul wins Turkey,” but in local elections that were seen as a referendum on his leadership, Erdoğan lost Istanbul – not once but twice. The opposition (Republican People’s Party – CHP) increased its lead over the AKP from 13,000 votes to 777,000 in the election re-run on 23 June.
“We will bring freedoms to this society, we will repair the injustices of this society,” Istanbul’s new mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, exclaimed to the crowd as he celebrated his victory. Under Erdoğan, civil liberties have increasingly been curtailed: since the attempted coup d’état in 2016, more than 200 journalists have been arrested or detained on account of their work. The state of emergency, which was imposed in the wake of the coup, ended last July but the chokehold on the press has continued. In the first half of 2019, Turkey accounted for 12.3% of all the alerts on the Council of Europe’s Platform for the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists, a mechanism that monitors threats to media freedom in 47 countries.
Deniz Yücel
But can journalists soon hope to be able to carry out their work without fear of threats or judicial harassment? Individual rulings that seem to suggest so – such as the Constitutional Court’s ruling on 28 June that Turkish-German journalist Deniz Yücel’s year-long detention was illegal – should not be interpreted as indicators of the AKP’s weakening grip on the judiciary. As Sinan Ülgen of the Edam think-tank wrote the day after the Istanbul election re-run, “very little” may change in the near term.
In June, journalists in Turkey continued to face judicial harassment in the form of investigations, police raids, detentions, and travel bans. On 12 June, 27 employees of the defunct Kurdish-language daily Azadiya Welat became the subjects of an investigation by Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office. Three days later, in a separate case, seven journalists were taken into custody during a police raid on Etkin News Agency (ETHA) in Istanbul. They were held at the Security Branch of Istanbul Security Directorate for four days, before being released under travel bans.
A newspaper close to the ruling party called the CHP’s win a “ballot box coup d’état”. When Erdoğan’s leadership was challenged by the 2013 Gezi Park protests or the 2016 coup, he responded by further choking dissenting voices. This time, will his response be different?[/vc_column_text][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1562165496706-c1b57e11-b6c6-3″ taxonomies=”8996″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
24 Jan 19 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
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Social media apps on phone, Jason Howie/Flickr
After the widespread anti-government Gezi Park protests in 2013, social media platforms became an alternative source of news as the conventional mainstream media lost its credibility due to its biased reporting. Thereafter, posts were increasingly muzzled by the government, something that intensified in the wake of the failed coup attempt in July 2016. This is a particular problem for Turkey’s Kurds who have taken to social media in the absence of Kurdish media, which has largely been shuttered.
According to BIA Media Monitoring Reports, 182 media outlets have been shut down since the coup attempt. The actual number of news sites, social media posts and online news reports that have been blocked is unknown.
Özcan Kılıç, a lawyer who mostly defends Kurdish journalists and media outlets warned that if there aren’t deferments of verdicts in the cases, there could be more than 7,000 social media users imprisoned in the country. He points out that journalists facing charges related to their social media activities have mostly been sharing links to their own news articles.
“Kurdish journalists mostly share their pieces on their own social media pages because pro-Kurdish TV channels, newspapers are shut down and access to the pro-Kurdish news outlets are banned. The only way to inform people is through their own social media pages, such as Twitter or Facebook,” says Kılıç. “There is a double standard against Kurdish journalists and news outlets. I had a client newspaper which was prosecuted for publishing a photo of Öcalan [one of the founders of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party] while he was smiling for ‘making terrorist propaganda by representing a terrorist organisation’s leader positively’. The judiciary approach is ‘If mass media did it, it is journalism, if Kurds did it, it is propaganda’.”
“When Redhack leaked the emails of Berat Albayrak [then-energy, now the economy minister and a son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan] they started to focus on the social media posts,” Kılıç adds. “In the leaked files trial, it was the socialist, leftist and Kurdish journalists who were prosecuted and the only evidence was their news stories that they posted online.”
When the government woke up to social media as a free speech medium, it launched a virtual patrol squad of police officers under the Department of Cybercrime in several cities. According to General Directorate of Security Affairs, the virtual patrols are able to deal with offences falling within the scope of the Public Security Division, listed as online sexual harassment, threat, insult, pandering, inducing suicide, blackmail and obscenity.
Kılıç says that these virtual patrol squads “check all the corners of the internet and create digital reports on individuals’ social media profiles”.
Police reports on social media profiles are collected from open sources, therefore these reports cannot be used as evidence in the prosecutions. “Very few of the courts take these notice and asks for further evidence,” says Kılıç. “But some are. When they ask for authentication of the social media profile which was subjected to trial, prosecutors use even personal information of suspects’ family, children or spouse.”
Kılıç’s note refers to the case of Kurdish journalist Rawin Sterks, in which the prosecutor demanded he be charged with conducting propaganda for a terrorist organisation due to his Facebook post about a documentary he had made about Reşit Marinus, a Kurdish peshmerga, the military forces of the federal region of Iraqi Kurdistan. Sterk denied the charge against him. Istanbul’s 34th Heavy Penal Court didn’t accept the indictment saying that the preamble of “the ‘peshmerga’ title did not refer any PKK militants”. The prosecutor then submitted another indictment, which restated the information in the first, but also added a police report which included some photographs and posts of Sterk’s family. The court then accepted the indictment.
Kılıç said that journalists who are targeted with charges often go public but non-journalists don’t because they fear for the impact on their families. “Regardless if they are educated or not, Kurdish people have an expression problem,” he says. “The Kurdish media is shut down, they cannot gather and celebrate Newroz, they cannot protest. So they do the most convenient thing and post their views on social media.”
When Turkey invaded Afrin, a town in northern Syria, on 10 January 2018, the Ministry of Interior stated that 845 people taken into custody for their online posts about the military operation. Most of them were Kurdish.
“Even posting Selahattin Demirtaş’s [former leader of People’s Democratic Party which is pro-Kurdish and the third biggest party in Parliament. Demirtaş is in prison for more than two years] would be considered ‘terrorist propaganda’,” says Kılıç. “After Afrin operation, even religious, AKP electorate Kurdish people get detained for social media posts.”
He warns: “A bigger crackdown is approaching for the social media posts for the last 5 years. Especially towards the posts that related to the protests which sparked by the Islamic State’s attacks on Kobani in 2014.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1548178869839-7300ed07-67e9-0″ taxonomies=”8607″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
14 Jan 19 | Germany, Global Journalist, Media Freedom, News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]This article is part of Index on Censorship partner Global Journalist’s Project Exile series, which has published interviews with exiled journalists from around the world.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
Can Dündar (Photo: Claude Truong Ngoc / Wikiepedia)
Can Dündar isn’t easily silenced.
The outspoken Turkish columnist and editor has been fired, jailed and even shot at by a would-be assassin for his coverage of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government. He’s been forced into exile, blocked from seeing his wife and faced calls from Turkey’s pro-government media that he be abducted from his new home in Berlin.
“Exile, on the one hand, is a paradise for a journalist like me,” says Can Dündar, 57. “In Turkey it was hell: you are not allowed to write or talk. In Germany, at least I can write, I can talk, I can defend my colleagues. But of course, I am away from my country, my family and my paper. And there are lots of risks around. I’ve been taking those risks and trying to fight back.”
Dündar isn’t one to avoid risks during his 37 years as a journalist, TV anchor and author. Earlier in his career he wrote for Hürriyet, one of the country’s largest news outlets, before becoming a columnist with the daily Milliyet. Dündar was fired from the latter in 2013 after criticizing the response of Erdogan’s ruling AKP party to the massive anti-government protests that began in Istanbul’s Gezi Park.
But Dündar wasn’t done. He went on to become editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet, a smaller newspaper that became increasingly critical of the government as Erdogan moved the country towards authoritarianism. In 2015, Cumhuriyet created a sensation by posting video footage online that it said showed Turkish intelligence forces transporting arms to opposition groups in Syria.
The report infuriated Erdogan, who labeled Dündar a traitor. Both Dündar and Cumhuriyet’s Ankara bureau chief, Erdem Gul were arrested and charged with espionage and ‘divulging state secrets.’ Dündar was interrogated for 11 hours before being taken to jail, where he was held 92 days, including 40 days in solitary confinement.
He was released to face trial, but on May 6, 2016, as Dündar awaited a verdict in his trial, a lone gunman approached him outside the courthouse and shot twice at him. The shots missed, and the gunman was wrestled away by a plain clothes policeman and Dündar’s wife. In video footage of the incident, the assailant is heard calling Dündar ‘a traitor’ – the exact the same words as Erdogan used to describe him.[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/4YlDTDg2k1s”][vc_column_text]Dündar was sentenced to nearly six years in jail, but appealed his conviction. While on holiday overseas during the appeal in July 2016, members of the Turkish military launched a failed coup against Erdogan.
In the aftermath, Erdogan declared a state of emergency and began a sweeping crackdown against perceived political opponents and alleged supporters of a dissident cleric the government accused of inspiring the coup attempt. More than 160,000 people were arrested and 152,000 government workers were fired, according to the UN’s human rights office.
Among the arrested were 166 journalists, 75 of whom were convicted of various crimes, including coup-plotting and disseminating terrorism propaganda, according to the Stockholm Centre for Freedom. Thirteen of Dündar’s Cumhuriyet colleagues were charged in the purge.
All of this was enough for Dündar not to return to Turkey. Now living in Berlin, he divides his time between writing a column for the German newspaper Die Zeit, launching the startup Turkish news site Özgürüz and lecturing in Europe. A play based on his writings in jail called “We Are Arrested,” debuted in May at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the United Kingdom, just weeks after Turkey’s highest court ruled that Dündar’s jail sentence should be extended to 15 to 20 years.
Dündar spoke with Global Journalist’s Kris Croonen about harassment from pro-Erdogan Turks in Germany and Turkey’s diplomatic efforts to capture him. Below, an edited version of their interview:
Global Journalist: What made you decide not to return to Turkey?
Dündar: After the military coup attempt on July 15, 2016, the rule of law was lifted, and my lawyers warned me that under the state of emergency I would be in jail again and it won’t be that easy to get out this time.
The first thing they had done was arrest the high [court] judges who had decided for our release previously. They are all in jail, still.
So it was a kind of a coup d’etat by Erdogan. I also consulted my colleagues, my family, and everybody advised me not to come back. Of course it was not an easy decision because I went on a holiday just with a suitcase full of books and nothing else.
So I stayed in Europe,without anything. First I traveled in different countries: to London, to Paris and Berlin…but I realized that Berlin was the best option because there was a huge interest about Turkey in Germany. I got an offer from Die Zeit to write a regular column for them, and PEN/Germany offered me a scholarship. So I decided to stay here.
GJ: The Turkish community in Germany is about 3 million people – and many are fervent supporters of Erdogan. Isn’t Germany a little bit unsafe for you?
Dündar: Not “a little bit.” It’s really the most dangerous place on Earth for someone like me [laughs]. In the beginning, I was not aware of the risks. But then I realized immediately, and it’s still a problem.
GJ: Do you encounter real danger in Berlin from pro-government Turks?
Dündar: Yeah, that’s daily business. They attack, they come to annoy you, they insult you…That kind of stuff. But it’s nothing different than Turkey, you know, you get used to this always facing risks. It’s not new for me. I just have to be careful. And if I do something in public, the German police normally comes and protects me.
GJ: When did you realize that your wife wouldn’t be able to join you?
Dündar: Immediately after I arrived in Berlin, I called her. The day after she was about to come to me but she was stopped at the airport…without any reason. They took her passport and confiscated it. First they said her passport is not reading on the computer. Then they said it’s lost, although she had it in her pocket.
Shortly after, they published a kind of decree saying that if someone is being blamed for terrorist acts, their family members may also be banned from travel. For the Turkish government, I am a terrorist. Everybody challenging the government is a terrorist. So it’s two and half years now that we are living separately…She can’t travel…it’s tough, really, it’s a kind of punishment. She’s held like a hostage.
GJ: When Erdogan came to Germany in September, he threatened to stay away from a press conference if you would be there. In the end, you were the one who decided not to show up. Why did you give in?
Dündar: That’s correct. Mr. Erdogan said, “It’s me or him.” I decided that a journalist should not be the subject of the news, he should be the writer of the news…On the other hand, what was important is asking questions. So I gave my questions to my German colleagues and they asked them. Everybody understood what kind of politician we are dealing with and how he’s scared of journalists and questions.
GJ: Do you still think it’s been worth the sacrifice?
Dündar: Yes, because we are not only defending a profession, we also have to save our country. It’s a high price we are paying. But the alternative is losing the country. So we have to do everything we can. I feel responsible for my son [who lives in the U.K.], I want him to be able to live in a free country. I have to do my best and this is the least that I can do: writing as a journalist and talking.
GJ: Do you still hope to be able to return to Turkey?
Dündar: In the short term, it will be painful, but we are coming to the end of it. After sixteen years of power, now Erdogan is facing [his] most difficult period of time, at least economically. So we will see the consequences. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/6BIZ7b0m-08″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship partner Global Journalist is a website that features global press freedom and international news stories as well as a weekly radio program that airs on KBIA, mid-Missouri’s NPR affiliate, and partner stations in six other states. The website and radio show are produced jointly by professional staff and student journalists at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, the oldest school of journalism in the United States. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Don’t lose your voice. Stay informed.” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate, and monitor threats to free speech. We believe that everyone should be free to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution – no matter what their views.
Join our mailing list (or follow us on Twitter or Facebook). We’ll send you our weekly newsletter, our monthly events update and periodic updates about our activities defending free speech. We won’t share, sell or transfer your personal information to anyone outside Index.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][gravityform id=”20″ title=”false” description=”false” ajax=”false”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”stretch_row_content”][vc_column][three_column_post title=”Global Journalist / Project Exile” full_width_heading=”true” category_id=”22142″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
11 Sep 18 | Artistic Freedom, News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
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Enough is Enough is a play formed as a gig, tells the stories of real people about sexual violence, through song and dark humour. It is written by Meltem Arikan, directed by Memet Ali Alabora, with music by Maddie Jones, and includes four female cast members who act as members of a band.
For Turkish director and actor Memet Ali Alabora, theatre is about creating an environment in which the audience is encouraged to think, react and reflect. His goal is to leave the audience thinking about and questioning issues, whether it be democracy, free speech, women’s rights or the concept of belonging.
Alabora has always been fascinated by the notion of play and games, even as a child. “I was in a group of friends that imitated each other, told jokes, made fun of things and situations,” he says. The son of actors Mustafa Alabora and Betül Arım, he was exposed early on to the theatre. In high school, Alabora took on roles in plays by Shakespeare and Orhan Veli. He was one of the founders of Garajistanbul, a contemporary performing arts institution in Istanbul.
For Alabora, ludology — the studying of gaming — is not merely about creating different theatrical personalities and presenting them to the audience each time. Rather, it is about creating an alternative to ordinary life — an environment in which actors and members of the audience could meet, intermingle and interact. For those two hours or so, participants are encouraged to think deeply about and reflect upon their own personal stories and the consequences of their actions.
“I think I’m obsessed with the audience. I always think about what is going to happen to the audience at the end of the play: What will they say? What situation do I want to put them in?” the Turkish actor says “It’s not about what messages I want to convey. I want them to put themselves in the middle of everything shown and spoken about, and think about their own responsibility, their own journey and history.”
“It’s not easy to do that for every audience you touch. If I can do that with some of the people in the audience, I think I will be happy,” Alabora adds.
It is this desire to create an environment in which the audience is encouraged to take part, to reflect, to think that Alabora brought to Mi Minör, a Turkish play that premiered in 2012. Written by Turkish playwright Meltem Arıkan, it is set in the fictional country of “Pinima”, where “despite being a democracy, everything is decided by the president”. In opposition to the president is the pianist, who cannot play high notes, such as the Mi note, on her piano because they have been banned. The play encouraged the audience to use their smartphones to interact with each other and influence the outcome.
Alabora explained the production team’s motivation behind the play: “At the time when we were creating Mi Minör, our main motive was to make each and every audience if possible to question themselves. This is very important. The question we asked ourselves was: if we could create a situation in which people could face in one and a half hour, about autocracy, oppression, how would people react?”
The goal wasn’t to “preach the choir” or convey a certain message about the world. It was to encourage the audience not be complacent. “Would the audience stand with the pianist, who advocates free speech and freedom of expression, or would they side with the autocratic president?” Alabora asks.
Alabora considered was how people would react when faced with the same situation in real life. “They were reacting, but was it a sort of reaction where they react, get complacent with it and go back to their ordinary lives, or would they react if they see the same situation in real life?”
On 27 May 2013, a wave of unrest and demonstrations broke out in Gezi Park, Istanbul to protest the urban development plans being carried out there. Over the next few days, violence quickly escalated, with the police using tear gas to suppress peaceful demonstrations. By July 2013, over 8,000 people were injured and five dead.
In the aftermath, Turkish authorities accused Mi Minör of being a rehearsal for the protests. Faced with threats against their lives, Arikan, Alabora and Pinar Ogun, the lead actress, had little choice but to leave the country.
But how could a play that was on for merely five months be a rehearsal for a series of protests that involved more than 7.5 million people in Istanbul alone? “You can’t teach people how to revolt,” Alabora says. “Yes, theatre can change things, be a motive for change, but we’re not living in the beginning of the 20th century or ancient Greece where you can influence day-to-day politics with theatre.”
The three artists relocated to Cardiff, but their experience did not prevent them from continuing with the work they love. They founded Be Aware Productions in January 2015 and their first production, Enough is Enough, written by Arikan, told the stories of women who were victims of domestic violence, rape, incest and sexual abuse. The team organised a month-long tour of more than 20 different locations in Wales.
“In west Wales, we performed in a bar where there was a rugby game right before – there was already an audience watching the game on TV and drinking beer,” Alabora says. “The bar owner gave the tickets to the audience in front and kept the customers who had just seen the rugby game behind.”
“After the play, we had a discussion session and it was as if you were listening to the stories of these four women in a very intimate environment,” he adds. “When you go through something like that, it becomes an experience, which is more than seeing a show.”
After each performance, the team organised a “shout it all out” session, in which members of the audience could discuss the play and share their personal stories with each other. One person said: “Can I say something? Don’t stop what you are doing. You have just reached out one person tonight. That’s a good thing because it strengthened my resolve. Please keep doing that. Because you have given somebody somewhere some hope. You have given me that. You really have.”
Be Aware Productions is now in the process of developing a new project that documents how the production team ended up in Wales and why they chose it as their destination.
“What we did differently with this project was that we did touring rehearsals. We had three weeks of rehearsal in six different parts of Wales. The rehearsals were open to the public, and we had incredible insight from people about the show, about their own stories and about the theme of belonging,” Alabora shares.
Just like Mi Minor and Enough is Enough, the motivation behind this new project is to encourage the audience to think, to reflect on their own personal stories and experiences: “With this new project, I want them to really think personally about what they think or believe and where this sense of belonging is coming from, have they thought about it, and just share their experiences.” [/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner content_placement=”top”][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
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Index encourages an environment in which artists and arts organisations can challenge the status quo, speak out on sensitive issues and tackle taboos.
Index currently runs workshops in the UK, publishes case studies about artistic censorship, and has produced guidance for artists on laws related to artistic freedom in England and Wales.
Learn more about our work defending artistic freedom.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1536657340830-d3ce1ff1-7600-4″ taxonomies=”15469″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
