12 May 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, Turkey
Young people in Turkey have a lot to feel enraged about, from worsening living conditions to the government’s rampant corruption. Since 2015, I have felt my own fair share of rage.
That was the year my father, Can Dündar, a journalist and former editor-in-chief of the opposition daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, was imprisoned on trumped up terror charges.
Pro-government press outlets told lies about him and our family, and prosecutors sought multiple life sentences for his “crime” of reporting on covert arms shipments to Syria. Although he was released nearly 100 days later thanks to public solidarity and a Supreme Court decision, my family was eventually forced into exile, with my parents now living in Germany and myself in the UK.
My father likens Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s tactics to those of Vladimir Putin and multiple other global dictators. “Arrest the opposition, weaponise the judiciary, silence the media, spread fear and disinformation, protect your throne,” he has told me.
Now, ten years later, I have hardly been able to sleep since youth-led protests erupted across Turkey last month following the arrest of Istanbul’s mayor and President Erdoğan’s main rival, Ekrem İmamoğlu. He has been sent to Silivri Prison (also known as Marmara), the same jail my father was imprisoned in.
Once again, this represents a devastating attack on Turkey’s democratic rights and freedom of speech. I’ve been following reports from the handful of independent media that are still operating. According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), 90% of the media in Turkey is now under government control, which has allowed pro-government disinformation to run riot.
After 22 years in power, Erdoğan’s regime has left the economy in ruins, corrupted institutions, and suppressed basic rights. Since 2016, close to 150 local mayors have been dismissed or detained, and replaced with government-appointed bureaucrats. Leaders from three major political parties are now in prison. İmamoğlu and 91 elected officials from the Istanbul Mayor’s office face false corruption charges. It’s a mockery of justice – especially as so much of the ruling party’s corruption avoids scrutiny, and journalists, lawyers and anyone else who draws attention to the government are prosecuted.
Whilst protests continue despite blanket bans in major cities, digital censorship is rife as social media networks have been stifled by low bandwidth. X complied with government requests to shut down hundreds of accounts; TV news coverage has been cut and channels have been threatened with the cancellation of their licences. Meanwhile, 1,133 protestors have been arrested, with many beaten and detained. More than 300 of those arrested are students, and face potential jail sentences and a ban from ever running for political office, not to mention missing their studies. Footage of police brutality continues to fill my social media feeds – crowds of young people beaten and wounded, or shot with tear gas and rubber bullets, some directly in the eye.
The student demonstrations in İstanbul have ignited mass protests in nearly all Turkish cities. Young people have united across ideological and economic divides and catalysed a fractured political opposition into action, symbolised by the chant, “No liberation alone, all of us or none”. At one rally, Özgür Özel, the leader of the main political opposition the Republican People’s Party (CHP), thanked young people for ignoring his caution and taking the lead. A young man was pictured carrying his father on his back to the polls that had been set up to support the detained Istanbul mayor’s candidacy as a presidential candidate against Erdoğan; 15 million people turned out to vote for him in a day.
The spirit of solidarity continues to grow against increasing cruelty. Mothers who have spoken out for their children’s arrest have been detained themselves. Teachers supporting their students’ rights have been sacked, and students at hundreds of high schools have organised sit-ins to show solidarity with them. Thanks to the mobilisation, nearly half of the young people arrested have been released but 48 remain in prison. The political opposition has organised a nationwide boycott of pro-government businesses, and people have been detained for promoting it.
But people continue to show dissent. The CHP holds weekly peaceful gatherings across different cities and municipalities of Istanbul to keep the momentum going. The government recently blocked the access of spotlights to one major gathering in the Beyazıt district. Thousands of people pulled up their phone’s flashlights instead, defying the darkness and lighting up the town square and each other’s faces.
Despite digital censorship, the internet is also being used as a convening space. The Istanbul mayor’s account is currently banned from posting on X, so supporters have reacted by changing their profile photos to his, sprouting countless İmamoğlu accounts across the platform. When X started shutting these down for “likeness” complaints, they got creative by making alternative, hilarious versions of his photo instead. A whack-a-mole scenario has unfolded where every act of oppression creates its own act of resistance.
Today, one in four people aged 15 to 24 in Turkey is neither working nor in school. Youth unemployment has hit a record high in the country. Gallup’s Global Emotions Report conducted across 116 countries found that Turkey scored near the bottom of its rankings for “positive experiences” in 2024, as it has done since 2020, with high levels of unhappiness and anger. This social environment has no doubt fueled the protests.
A tweet from author, editor and teacher Taner Beyter sums it up: “Young friends, we have nothing to lose. We won’t be able to buy a car or a house. We won’t have stocks. Even if we succeed in the exams, we’ll be singled out in interviews. If we are taken to court, we don’t have ‘our guy’ to bail us out. We won’t get rich in this corrupt economy. Let’s carry on resisting against those stealing our future.”
For many Turkish youths, this is their first protest movement against a government they’ve only ever known as Erdoğan’s – just as mine was during the 2013 Gezi Park protests, a wave of demonstrations that began with the demolition of Istanbul’s Gezi Park. It quickly sparked into a movement against mounting injustices. At their core, both movements have their roots in inequality and crackdowns on free expression, and have been driven by a hope for change.
The millions who came out to the streets during the Gezi Park protests have since been separated and many were individually targeted. Once the crowds dissipated, no longer linked arm-in-arm, people were easier to subdue and prosecute with chilling effects.
But decades of crackdowns have failed to silence young people in Turkey. A photo on my X feed shows a poster raised by a young protester. Under the names of those who were killed during Gezi Park, a note reads: “I was nine years old then when my brothers stood up for me. I may have missed meeting them, but they’ve all gained a place in me. I promise I won’t let this be.”
There’s hope in collective reaction. Youth movements propel frustrations into action, catalysing a fractured opposition to work together for common goals. Established political parties may struggle to meet their demands at first, but they are slowly being shaped by them and changing their approach.
Around the world, young dissidents are speaking out to demand a better future in the face of mounting challenges from inequality to global conflict, state corruption to environmental decline.
Still, pressures against them are mounting. Their legitimate demands are being criminalised across the world from Iran to Palestine, USA to Belarus, Serbia to Myanmar, and more.
This is why at PEN International, the world’s largest association of writers, we’re building a youth network called the Young Writers Committee with representatives from 58 countries. We launched our web platform Tomorrow Club last week along with a podcast series, to amplify the stories of brave young people from around the world, and to create spaces for them to collaborate, learn about each other’s lives and struggles, and discuss how to cope with them.
It’s clear to see the shared experience across borders. We are all suffering from a shrinking space for free expression, and we want to uplift each other, exchange tools and tales, and establish supportive links for a shared future.
There is a common pride in the word “youth”. Although it paints a massively diverse group with a single brush, it can also help us come together against urgent challenges.
Cihan Tugal, a sociology professor at Berkeley University in California, USA, recently noted: “When Erdoğan fights for himself, he is also fighting for Trump, [Narendra] Modi, [Javier] Milei and Orbán, even if their interests do not always align. When the students and others in the street struggle against Erdoğan, they are also fighting for the rest of the world.”
That type of togetherness is demonstrated by young people protesting in Turkey and other countries. We should support and empower them to keep going. Their strong stance for justice and a better, fairer future can bring together fractured masses and pave the way against rising tides of authoritarianism.
3 Apr 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Syria, Turkey
At 2.30pm on 19 December 2024, Ahmed Mohamed, editor-in-chief of the Syrian-Kurdish Hawar News Agency (ANHA), received a dispatch from two of his colleagues. An hour later, they were dead.
“They had just sent me a message saying ‘we’re coming back’,” Mohamed told Index.
Cihan Bilgin and Nazim Daştan, two Kurdish reporters, were reportedly targeted and killed by a Turkish airstrike as they returned from the Tishreen Dam near Aleppo, where they were covering ongoing clashes between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Turkish-backed network of militias known as the Syrian National Army (SNA).
Indeed, Turkey, which is violently opposed to the Kurdish-led project due to its own domestic repression of the Kurdish cause, continues to target the region and journalists in particular, profiting from the chaos caused by the fall of former Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. According to the Kurdish-run Firat News Agency (ANF), Turkey has killed 14 journalists and wounded seven others in the Iraqi Kurdistan and Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) regions since 2019.
Journalists under attack
Sinem Adali, a journalist for Rojava TV, is preparing to go to the Tishreen dam front. Photo by Angeline Desdevises / Hans Lucas
In ANHA’s editorial offices in Qamishli, the de-facto Syrian Kurdish capital, a memorial showcases the microphones and cameras of journalists who died in the line of duty. Since 2017, six of ANHA’s journalists have been killed in the field: three reportedly in Turkish attacks, and three while covering the Kurds’ famous fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Despite the recent ceasefire agreement between Syria’s new Turkish-linked president Ahmed al-Sharaa and SDF commander Mazloum Abdi, Turkish bombardments continue to target the Tishreen Dam, according to local monitor Rojava Information Center.
Leyla Abdi, a reporter for Ronahi TV, was wounded at the dam in January. Three days after her arrival at the dam, she was standing alongside civilians staging a protest on the crucial infrastructure, when she was hit by a bombardment. “That day, a dozen drones flew over us all day long. Turkey systematically strikes civilian convoys,” said Abdi, who is still recovering from her injuries.
Kurdish journalists aren’t only targeted when working on the frontline. Repeated attacks have made the road along the Turkish border dangerous, if not impassable. It was here that, in August 2023, the vehicle of the women’s television channel Jin TV was destroyed. The driver, Necimedîn Sînan, was killed instantly, while journalist Delila Ağît lost an arm. Dijwar Iso, who also works at ANHA, said that press workers are now obliged to switch off their phones during missions to prevent the Turkish armed forces on the other side of the border from being able to track and target them.
These attacks are part of a wider drive to stifle the press from covering Turkey’s occupation of North and East Syria, which has killed hundreds and displaced hundreds of thousands of primarily Kurdish civilians to date. In November 2022, journalist Essam Abdallah was killed and another journalist Mohammad Al Jarada was injured in separate Turkish air raids on the same day.
In 2019, a civilian convoy accompanied by Kurdish journalists and a French television team was bombed by Turkish forces, killing two local journalists and injuring others. Several civilians were also killed in the strike.
Although journalists are protected by international law, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s administration is stepping up its attacks on journalists beyond its borders. In neighbouring Iraq, a drone strike in August last year killed two Kurdish media workers working for a local TV channel and wounded their colleague. Local sources say the drone was operated by the Turkish armed forces, which the Turkish defence ministry has denied. Human rights organisations and Kurdish media unions have called on the United Nations to investigate attacks on journalists, which they describe as “war crimes”.
Gypsy Guillén Kaiser, director of advocacy and communications at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in New York, drew attention to the recent murder of Cihan Bilgin and Nazim Daştan, calling on the Turkish authorities to conduct a thorough investigation.
Psychological warfare
In ANHA’s offices, a memorial showcase displays the equipment and photos of six journalists who died while doing their job in north-eastern Syria. Photo by Angeline Desdevises / Hans Lucas
These constant attacks have created a climate of insecurity for all journalists in the region. Local journalist Loristan Derwish said: “As a woman, it was already hard to obtain the legitimacy to practise our profession and now we are confronted with attacks from Turkey and online harassment.” At the end of 2024, she was subjected to a wave of online harassment following a TV report she made interviewing female Kurdish fighters. Several Instagram accounts impersonating her were created, displaying fake pornographic photo montages. She believes the culprits are in Turkey.
Online harassment is predominantly aimed at female journalists. Arîn Swed, spokesperson for the Syrian Kurdish Women’s Media Union (YRJ), said the union defends all female media workers against sexist and psychological attacks. “We supported Cîhan when she was threatened over the phone by MIT [Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı – the Turkish secret service],” she said.
As of today, it is believed that at least five journalists, including Ciwana Cuma, a reporter for Ronahî TV, are being targeted. Cuma has covered the confrontations at the Tishreen Dam on several occasions. In a post on X (which has since been deleted) made by a Turkish account with more than 200,000 followers, the young woman was described as “another example like Cihan Bilgin”, “a terrorist”, and therefore identified as a potential future target.
The dehumanisation of journalists continues after their death. According to multiple sources, a photo of the decapitated body of reporter Vedat Erdemci, who was killed in a Turkish airstrike in 2019 in the Syrian city of Ras al-Ain, was sent to his mother. The Turkish state also refused to allow Cihan Bilgin and Nazim Daştan’s bodies to be handed over to their families in Turkey. They were finally buried in Qamishlo in January.
The West’s failure to respond to these crimes also creates negative psychological outcomes, local press workers say. “The death of a Kurdish journalist doesn’t cause a stir. The West creates a hierarchy among lives,” said Berîtan Ali, the regional head of a Kurdish TV station. Dilyar Cizîrî, co-chair of Free Press Union (YRA) organising in north-east Syria echoed her words: “Turkey’s attacks benefit from a sense of impunity, [caused] by the silence of international institutions.”
Destroying material resources
Beyond psychological attacks and online harassment, one of Turkey’s objectives is to shut down all means of expression for journalists in north and east Syria. Their social media accounts are frequently closed down by the platforms and their websites hacked. The ANHA website is the victim of roughly 7,000 cyber attacks per day, according to editor Mohamed. In 2019, hackers succeeded in replacing the homepage with a Turkish nationalist message, he said. Radio frequencies are also hijacked, the editor added, and overlaid with Turkish nationalist propaganda.
The media also face difficulties in obtaining the equipment they need to do their job, due to an embargo imposed on the region. “It is impossible to transport professional equipment legally across the Iraqi border. We have to find other ways,” said Mohamed. The workers are therefore forced to smuggle in protective equipment, such as bulletproof vests and helmets. ANHA only owns five vests for a team of 61 journalists, he said.
Fleeing domestic repression
The bodies of the two Kurdish journalists Cihan Bilgin and Nazim Daştan are buried in Qamishli. Photo by Angeline Desdevises / Hans Lucas
In Turkey, attacks on opposition journalists have forced many into exile. Threatened with imprisonment for covering a demonstration near the Syrian border, Turkish-Kurdish journalist Dilan Dilok had to flee Turkey for Syria in 2017. “If I return to Turkey, I will either be arrested or killed,” she said. She adds that Turkish police are trying to intimidate her again: “My parents are often raided in the middle of the night and subjected to long interrogations.”
Bazid Erven, a reporter for Kurdish news agency Ajansa Welat, and 10 other journalists were allegedly arrested on 20 December 2024 in Van, Turkey, for protesting against the assassination of their colleagues. “These arrests are nothing new, they are routine for us,” Erven said. The day after his own arrest, seven other journalists were detained in Istanbul for several weeks. “There is state and police repression against Kurdish journalists,” he added. It therefore comes as no surprise that Turkey is ranked 158 out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ worldwide press freedom ranking.
A future for the Syrian press
A Jin TV journalist reports on the funeral of two Kurdish political figures killed by a Turkish drone strike in Iraq. Photo by Angeline Desdevises / Hans Lucas
Since the fall of Assad’s regime, the ANHA agency has opened several offices across Syria. Its journalists, who previously worked underground in other regions of the country, can now operate openly. However, there is still concern for Syrian news professionals in view of the rampant insecurity in the country, a reality brought home by recent massacres committed by forces of the new government, targeting the Alawite minority.
On 6 February, interim prime minister Mohammed al-Bashir ordered the dissolution of the Syrian Journalists‘ Union (SJU). The Free Press Union (YRA)’s Cizîrî strongly condemned this decision: “The SJU was controlled by the former regime, but the solution should have been to restructure it.” The International Federation of Journalists also sent a letter to Al-Bashir and Syrian president Al-Sharaa, condemning the dissolution of the union and calling on them to uphold international law.
North and East Syria’s YRA says it is ready to help establish a new nationwide independent union and has just set up a Security Advisory and Risk Management Unit in order to provide “support and assistance to all Syrian journalists and media workers”. It seeks to pressure armed groups so that they abide by international law and wants to “contribute to efforts toward accountability and justice”.
In Qamishlo, the latter are yet to be found. Women’s Media Union (YRJ) president Swed is moved when she talks about her colleagues who have been killed in the field. But above all, she is determined to fight for their legacy: “As soon as [Cihan’s death] was announced, the women of the union took over. Today, if ANHA’s media coverage of Tishreen continues, it is thanks to the other women journalists.”
28 Mar 2025 | Americas, Asia and Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, India, Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Palestine, Russia, Turkey, United States
In the age of online information, it can feel harder than ever to stay informed. As we get bombarded with news from all angles, important stories can easily pass us by. To help you cut through the noise, every Friday Index will publish a weekly news roundup of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression from the past seven days. This week, we look at the detention of an Oscar Award-winning documentary maker and a poorly-monitored Signal group chat.
Attacks on investigative journalism: The assault and detention of Hamdan Ballal
On Monday 24 March, Yuval Abraham, an Israeli investigative journalist and co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, announced on X that his fellow co-director Hamdan Ballal had been assaulted by Israeli settlers, and was subsequently taken from an ambulance by Israeli soldiers and detained. Ballal is a Palestinian filmmaker from Susya in the occupied West Bank. He was released on Tuesday 25 March. In an interview with The Guardian, Ballal said that the attack was “revenge” for the creation of No Other Land, which explores Israeli soldiers’ destruction of the West Bank’s Masafer Yatta, a collection of 19 Palestinian hamlets. The documentary was created by a group of Palestinian and Israeli journalists and filmmakers, with particular focus on the positive alliance developed between Abraham and a Palestinian activist called Basel Adra. This collaborative effort has proved controversial in Israel and the occupied West Bank, and Ballal recounted being physically attacked and beaten by both settlers and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers. His lawyer, Lea Tsemel, said Ballal didn’t receive adequate medical care for his injuries in detention, and that she had no access to him for several hours after his arrest. Ballal’s treatment represents a significant attack on investigative journalism, and follows a string of free expression violations in Israel and the occupied West Bank, including restrictions on journalists and the censorship of cultural products depicting Palestinian-Israeli relations.
National security breaches: US war plans leaked via Signal group chat
This week saw a most remarkable story come out of the USA; on 11 March, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the magazine The Atlantic, was accidentally (and rather carelessly) added to a top secret group chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal where senior US Cabinet members were discussing plans for attacks on Houthi targets across Yemen. Chat members included US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, among other chief members of the Donald Trump administration. At first sceptical of the “Houthi PC small group” chat’s legitimacy, Goldberg realised it was definitely real after attacks discussed in the chat were carried out a few hours later. To hold such crucial discussions via a messaging app, then to mistakenly add a journalist to said discussions, constitutes a monumental breach in American national security. Both Hegseth and US National Security Adviser Michael Waltz have faced great scrutiny for this major mishap. Meanwhile, Goldberg has faced backlash from the highest echelons of the US government, with Trump himself attempting to lead a smear campaign against the journalist.
Film censorship: Globally-acclaimed film Santosh banned in India
With Hamdan Ballal bearing the brunt of the backlash to his co-directed documentary in the West Bank, there are other reports of film censorship coming out of India. Santosh, a film created by British-Indian director Sandhya Suri, has received international plaudits for its depiction of corruption and bigotry eminent in the Indian police force. Yet it was this very portrayal that has seen it banned from being screened in India. The film – which features an all-Indian cast and is filmed completely in the Hindi language – debuted at Cannes film festival and was nominated for both a Bafta and an Oscar. But its depictions of misogyny, caste-based violence and prejudice, institutional Islamophobia and brutality in the police force mean it may never see the light of day in the country of its setting.
Protest crackdowns: BBC correspondent deported from Turkey
Following the arrest and detention of Istanbul mayor and presidential political rival Ekrem Imamoglu, protests erupted across major cities in Turkey. Clashes between demonstrators and riot police reportedly saw more than a thousand people detained between 19 and 23 March. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has cracked down on the protests – and seemingly, their coverage as well. BBC correspondent Mark Lowen, who had been in the country reporting on the demonstrations for several days, was taken from his hotel by Turkish authorities on 26 March, according to the BBC, then deported back to the UK on 27 March. The authorities claimed that Lowen was “being a threat to public order”. Imamoglu is seen as Erdoğan’s main rival for the 2028 presidential election, and similarly to how many see his arrest as an attempt to remove political opposition, the deportation of a journalist could be seen as an attempt to obscure the truth.
Political prisoners: Russian anti-war activist’s prison sentence extended
Maria Ponomarenko is a Siberian activist and journalist who was jailed in 2023 for reporting on the Russian bombing of a theatre in Mariupol, southern Ukraine. The Kremlin denied any involvement in the attack, thought to have killed hundreds of civilians, despite multiple eyewitness reports. Ponomarenko was sentenced to six years in prison after her journalism was deemed to be “fake news”. Now, her sentence has been extended by one year and ten months because she allegedly attacked two prison guards, a charge that Amnesty International has described as “spurious” and which the human rights group claims is an attempt to further silence and repress her. Ponomarenko has reportedly launched a hunger strike while in prison to demand better treatment and justice for her false charges.
6 Jan 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, France
This week, 7 January 2025 marks exactly ten years since the Charlie Hebdo attacks, when Islamist gunmen stormed the satirical magazine’s Paris editorial office and killed 11 people over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed. A month after the attack, the Turkish writer Elif Shafak wrote for us on the increasingly divisive world in which we live, and the urgent need to differentiate between the right to be offended and the right to commit violence. Ten years on, with the proliferation of fractious rhetoric on social media, her words seem more poignant than ever. To mark the anniversary of the tragedy, we have republished Shafak’s piece below. It was originally published online on 12 March 2015, and in print in Volume 44, Issue 1 of Index on Censorship. Charlie Hebdo has also produced a special edition to mark ten years, which you can read more about here.
After the horrific attacks against the French satirical journal Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris, the world has turned into a Tower of Babel where there are too many languages spoken but too little, if any, real communication. Ever since those three days of terror in France, across the globe there has been more anger than sorrow, more emotional backlash than rational analysis, and more confusion than insight.
As heartwarming as it was to see millions of Parisians march against religious extremism and countless others show their solidarity via hashtags and messages on social media, we cannot ignore the fact that a rather disturbing cognitive gap is opening up between different parts of the world and different segments of humanity. Even in the face of atrocity, humankind is failing to speak the same language.
Among the political leaders who marched in Paris there were quite a few with a lamentable human rights curriculum vitae. While Saudi Arabia was quick to send a representative to France, the regime did not shy away from publicly lashing Raif Badawi, a liberal blogger, for his views. Israel, Russia and Egypt, among others, have been criticised for their double standards at home and abroad. Turkey, my motherland, has a shocking number of journalists and cartoonists either in prison or facing trial.
No doubt, the most moving response to the act of brutality came from cartoonists across the globe. With powerful images and few words they showed their unflinching support for freedom of expression. But those of us who cannot draw, and therefore must talk or write have done a poor job in general. With every aggrandising remark the cognitive gap widened.
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy claimed: “This is a war declared on civilization.” Soon after, the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced: “French citizens carry out such a massacre, and Muslims pay a price.” He then added: “Games are being played with the Islamic world, we need to be aware of this.” Such statements only served to increase conspiracy theories, which abound throughout the Middle East. Meanwhile journalists, academics and writers lampooned each other. The response to a book is another book.
So far, the language over Charlie Hebdo has been more divisive than unifying. Even the usage of conjunctions is a problem. After the tragedy, a top-level politician in Turkey tweeted that it was wrong to kill journalists, but they should not have mocked Islamic values. Never had the word “but” disturbed me so much.
The controversy had important echoes inside Turkey. The secularist newspaper Cumhuriyet wrote a powerful statement, saying that having lost some of their own writers to terrorism in the past, they understood so well the pain of the Charlie Hebdo killings. But the AKP government was of a different mind. The prime minister said printing the cartoons would be considered “heavy sedition” and they would not allow anyone to insult the Prophet. Accordingly, a court order was issued to prohibit access to Turkish websites that insisted in publishing Charlie Hebdo’s recent cover.
In response, independent news website T24 openly defied the court ban and published the entire issue of the magazine. And people kept spreading the cover via their Twitter and Facebook accounts. It was interesting to see how many of these reactions came from people who were already tired of the AKP government’s restrictive attitudes towards freedom of speech. As always, Turkey’s social media operated as a political platform. Over the years as media freedoms shrunk visibly, the social media became more and more politicised.
Every journalist, every poet, every novelist in Turkey knows words carry a heavy weight, and they can get you in trouble. We know that only too well that because of a poem, an article, a novel, or even a tweet we can be sued, put on trial, demonised, even imprisoned. When we write, we write with this knowledge at the back of our minds. As a result there is a lot of silent self-censorship. Yet we find it rather difficult to talk about this subject, mostly because it is embarrassing.
As a Turkish writer both freedom of speech and freedom of imagination are precious to me. When I travel in Muslim-majority countries I often hear people saying “I am offended, don’t I have a right to be?” Yet I believe we are making a grave mistake by focusing on the word “offence”, and questioning whether art can be offensive or people have a right to be offended. We are stuck in a mental trap as long as we cannot manage to discuss violence and offence separately.
We need to divorce the two notions. It is perfectly human to be offended in the face of mockery, opprobrium or slander. That is understandable. Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Christians or agnostics, we can all feel offended by something someone says, writes or does. But that is where the line must be drawn. What is inhuman and unacceptable is to resort to violence and shed blood in response.
The response to a book is another book. The response to an article is writing a counter-article. The response to cartoons is more cartoons, not fewer. Words need to be answered with words. This simple equation is what we have failed to teach to both the younger generations and ourselves.
Let’s be clear: this is not a clash of civilizations. It is not even a battle of religions. Yet it is a clash, and a deepening one, between two mindsets. The real chasm is between those of us who believe in pluralistic democracy, culture of co-existence and the value of diversity and cosmopolitanism, and those who have chosen to divide humanity into mutually exclusive camps: us versus them. It is a cognitive clash therefore.
As Sufis have been saying throughout the centuries, we are all profoundly interconnected. Globalism has way too often been interpreted as an economic and political phenomenon. Yet it also means that our futures, our stories and our destinies are interconnected. The unhappiness of someone living in Pakistan affects the happiness of someone living in Belgium or Australia. We must understand that in this complex web of relations any divisive rhetoric is bound to create more of the same.
Extremism somewhere breeds extremism elsewhere. Islamophobia spawns anti-Westernism and anti-Westernism spawns Islamophobia. A far-right racist in Germany might regard a Taliban man in Pakistan as his arch-enemy but in fact, they are kindred spirits. They share surprisingly similar narrow mindsets. And what’s more, they need each other to exist and to thrive.
We need to get out of the vicious circle of division and hatred before it engulfs us all. Together we must stand and speak up for pluralistic democracy and harmonious coexistence. At the same time, however, now is the time to think about the response we have given to the tragedy calmly and carefully. In this response lie the hidden important clues to our strengths and weaknesses as fellow human beings and the sharpest dilemmas that will continue to beset the world in the 21st century.
