14 Nov 18 | News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”103683″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]The head judge cleared his throat and called the journalist. As soon as he pronounced her name, “Seda Taşkın,” in his high-pitched voice, a look of incredulity spread across the faces of the handful of people watching the trial in the austere courthouse in Muş, a small town in Turkey’s far east. One lawyer, startled, dared to point out the unexpected sequence of words: “Did you just call her ‘Seda?’” Rıdvan Konak asked.
For the first time throughout the trial, the judge’s impassive eyes betrayed a glimpse of nervousness. It must have dawned on him: During the previous hearings, he had insisted on calling her “Seher,” the name on her ID card. After all, the prosecution had claimed that “Seda” was nothing but a code name for her allegedly illegal activities. In fact, Taşkın’s purported code name was the sole shred of ostensible evidence for the prosecution’s charge of “membership in a terrorist organisation,” and the judge was absent-mindedly throwing it away.
A faint and uneasy smile formed below his thin moustache. “You thought all along that we were fixated on that, but we were not,” he managed to reply, looking awkwardly at lawyers from his raised platform. It was an explanation he mumbled aloud twice – just like a little boy caught in flagrante delicto trying to convince his parents that he wasn’t misbehaving. It was also an odd excuse given that the court had twice refused to release the journalist on the grounds that more evidence was needed to prove that all her family and friends had called her “Seda” since she was a toddler. Yet a hopeful question popped up in everyone’s mind. Could this slip of the tongue be a good omen?
The fact the head judge so naturally ended up calling the journalist by the name everybody used showed how much regard the court paid to the accusations levelled by the prosecution. The journalist’s lawyer, Ebru Akkal, said distorted evidence and interpretations were common in free speech cases. “But in Seda’s case, we are dealing with blatant lies,” Akkal said. Taşkın, a reporter focusing on culture, education and women’s rights, was accused of sharing articles on her social media accounts – none of which were written by her.
“Let’s imagine for a moment that they were claiming that Seda killed someone. But the prosecutor is unable to present the weapon with which the crime was committed or establish the place where the murder occurred,” Akkal explained. “What’s more, the person whom they claim was killed is not dead but stands before them. This is the kind of case that Seda was faced with.”
And it did feel as though Taşkın was being personally targeted by the anti-terrorism unit of Muş in light of the massive rights violations she experienced from the moment of her arrest, including a fabricated tipoff, physical and psychological ill-treatment during custody, threats, as well as blackmail.
Nevertheless, Akkal said they expected Taşkın’s release until the very moment that the verdict was pronounced. The judges overseeing the case, however, opted to change the goalposts at the last minute, suddenly and arbitrarily replacing the original accusation with the vaguer charge of “aiding a terrorist organisation without being a member.” The court also refused to provide any additional time to the defense to object to the charge as required.
“I think that the court was convinced that Seda had nothing to do with a terrorist organisation. But they needed to find a charge because they couldn’t let any individual who got into the authorities’ grip go without a sentence,” Akkal said.
The court eventually handed Taşkın four years and two months on the charge of “aiding a terrorist organisation without being a member” and three years and four months on the charge of “conducting propaganda,” adding up to a total of 7.5 years in jail. The journalist, who has already spent 10 months in pre-trial detention at the Silivri Prison in Ankara, will remain in jail during the appeal process. Taşkın was forced to make all her defense statements via video-conference broadcast on a screen inside the courtroom 1,000 kilometers from the capital.
The court had already buried police irregularities by refusing to investigate the identity of the person who gave the tipoff despite repeated requests by lawyers. The extension of the email address in the files, which authorities neglected to black out, clearly indicated the tipoff came from a member of the police department. The judges also refused to heed Taşkın’s long account of the abuse, strip searches, beatings and threats she suffered. But by sentencing her, they have closed the case with a minimum of fuss for the police and the prosecutor.
Taşkın’s lawyers expressed indignation at the court’s handling of the case, describing it as blatant bias. “If the judges are to wash the prosecutor’s hands and the prosecutor, in turn, the police’s hands, why not just let the police run the investigation and issue a verdict?” Akkal said.
“Eclectic and sensitive”
Only two years ago, Taşkın was thrilled when she learned that she had been appointed to the eastern city of Van by the pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya News Agency. She thought that her new position in the agency’s second largest regional office would give her invaluable experience as a journalist in a much tougher environment. The decision also meant leaving her family home in Ankara for the first time in her life. Her parents, however, were concerned about her plans, since journalists working in Kurdish provinces have become even more vulnerable to arrests and detentions since authorities declared a state of emergency in 2016.
She possibly chose the most difficult context possible to work “in the region,” as many reporters in the field refer to the Kurdish southeast. The crackdown on Kurdish media intensified during a military assault that was launched in the winter of 2015 and peaked under the state of emergency clampdown. Many journalists were tracked, investigated, threatened and some, such as Nedim Türfent, jailed and charged with terrorism offenses.
Ultimately, Taşkın’s motivation and determination won her family over, and the young journalist went to begin her work.
The poise she showed was a pleasant surprise for her elder sister Yelda. “We saw the change,” she says. “Seda is someone very emotional and restless. Although she tried, she didn’t graduate from university. So, Seda started as an intern at the agency and was hoping to study journalism after garnering some experience.”
In Van, she felt empowered to express her personality, especially when covering stories that were colourful or touching more so than merely political. “She was eclectic. Her sensitivity and inner conscience allowed her to report on universal subjects such as ecology or women’s issues,” her sister said. She toured villages around the Van Lake, met local people and developed her passion for photography to such a degree that she didn’t want to go back to Ankara.
Then, one day in December 2017, her agency sent her to Muş to report on as many articles as she could. It was Taşkın’s first time in the rural and conservative province. She travelled first to Varto, a former Armenian town populated today by a majority of Alevis – a community whose belief system is often labelled as a heterodox and progressive form of Shia Islam – who had fled Dersim during the state-perpetrated massacres of 1938. Dersim, today called Tunceli after the name of the Turkish state’s military operation, is also the hometown of Taşkın’s family.
After reporting on the newly established culture and solidarity association in Varto, she returned to the provincial center, a place firmly under the control of the police. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) had won the municipality over the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and kept the city under strict state authority. She would be arrested shortly thereafter.
Bizarre significance of hearing dates
According to her lawyer Akkal, the mere fact that proceedings were conducted in Muş seriously affected the course of the trial. “The rulings of courts are so inconsistent and unpredictable. Had Seda been arrested in Ankara she wouldn’t even have stayed in prison a day. At worst, she would have been released at the first hearing,” Akkal said. “A very different approach exists in places such as Muş, Bitlis or Van. People are declared guilty at the moment they are arrested. [Authorities] don’t follow the evidence to find the suspect, they collect the evidence based on the suspect instead.”
Taşkın’s case followed the same trajectory. Among the several reports she was covering, Taşkın met with the family of 80-year-old Sise Bingöl, who has been in jail on terror charges since 2016 despite suffering from heart and lung disease. The recordings of her interview with Bingöl’s relatives, which were found after Taşkın was arrested, were used as evidence in the trial even though the journalist never published them. Once she was taken in custody, police seemed to have dissected her Facebook and Twitter accounts to find any post that could make a terrorism charge admissible in the eyes of the Turkey’s ever less independent judiciary.
Taşkın’s former colleague Hayri Demir, a journalist based in Ankara who followed the last hearing in Muş, stressed that social media posts containing news reports should be considered as a journalistic activity in itself. “Social media has become a publishing space for journalists. It’s a space where journalists share their own and their colleagues’ articles,” said Demir, who himself is facing 10.5 years for five tweets – all of which lacked any personal comment – on Turkey’s military operation against the Syrian town of Afrin in January.
“It’s six days per character,” he joked. “They are trying to entirely silence journalists by even incriminating their social media posts.”
Accusing journalists of sharing other people’s news articles also violates the individuality of criminal responsibility, a critical principle of modern criminal law.
But aside from the dubious practices of the authorities, there was one aspect to Taşkın’s case that seemed to amount to psychological harassment: The symbolic dates of the hearings. The second hearing of the case was held on 2 July, the 25th anniversary of an attack by an extremist mob in Sivas that killed 33 Alevi artists. The third hearing was set on 12 September, the anniversary of the 1980 coup, which resulted in imprisonment and torture for thousands of left-wing and pro-Kurdish activists. The fourth and last hearing was on 10 October, the third anniversary of Turkey’s deadliest-ever terrorist attack, which the Islamic State perpetrated against peace activists in Ankara. As for the date of the first hearing, 30 April, that happened to coincide with the liberation of Muş from foreigners after World War I.
The journalist was the first one to notice the significance of the dates, Akkal said. “She told me, ‘Ebru, they are doing it intentionally.’ I don’t believe that the dates were randomly chosen either.”
The verdict will become definitive if the regional court rejects her appeal – and because Taşkın’s sentences are each under five years, she will not have recourse to the Supreme Court of Appeals if the lower court rules against her. Regional courts are hardly known for their initiative, but both lawyers and taşkın retain their hopes for a rare fair reassessment of the case. In the meantime, lawyers have applied to the Turkish Constitutional Court to halt the execution of the sentence based on a precedent for journalists Mehmet Altan and Şahin Alpay. In January 2018, the Constitutional Court ruled that the imprisonment of both journalists not only violated their right to security and freedom but that there was not enough evidence to hold the men. Although first instance courts controversially refused to implement the decision, the pair was released at the end of a legal row months later.
Taşkın’s lawyers are also preparing to file an application at the European Court of Human Rights, although Akkal noted that it will take at least a year for either of Turkey’s top courts to make a decision. Taşkın, meanwhile, may face years in prison waiting for justice to be served. “After the initial shock of the verdict, she is now calm. She is trying to spend her time productively,” Akkal said.
Her sister Yelda said Seda had started to learn English in prison and was reading lots of books. “We were expecting her to be released in each hearing. But we would like anyone who is unfairly imprisoned to be free,” she said, adding that Seda has tried to remain conscious of the fact that she is not the only journalist in jail.
Indeed, during her defense, Taşkın not only called for her release but expressed her wishes that all her colleagues would walk free – an expression of human solidarity against organised unlawfulness that has riddled the law, one unjust sentence at a time.[/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:1542196485676-71e5a902-cafb-4″ taxonomies=”8607″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
16 May 18 | News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”100382″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Seda Taşkın had just been sent to Muş, a tiny eastern Turkish city on a fertile plain surrounded by high mountains, to report on a few stories when police started to track her down. Hot on the case, police apparently availed themselves of a time machine, arresting the Mezopotamya news agency reporter late in December half an hour before a prosecutor had even issued an arrest warrant in concert with an informant’s tipoff. Taşkın’s subsequent trial, however, suggests that rather than breaking new grounds in physics, Turkey’s authorities are probably just breaking the law.
Taşkın appeared in court for the first time on 30 April to face charges of “membership in a terrorist organisation” and “conducting propaganda for a terrorist organisation.” The court date, however, exposed serious irregularities regarding her arrest, the treatment she received in custody and the evidence against her. During the hearing at the 2nd High Criminal Court of Muş, Taşkın’s lawyer highlighted the email address used to tip off authorities to the journalist’s alleged crimes.
According to the official document in the case file seen by Mapping Media Freedom’s Turkey correspondent, the email address denouncing Taşkın as a “militant” bore an “egm” extension, signifying the Turkish abbreviation for “general department of police.” Gulan Çağın Kaleli told the court that a mere 20 minutes were required to locate Taşkın and arrest her – a period that’s even less than the time it took to issue a mandatory arrest warrant. Questioning whether the anti-terror unit had, in fact, fabricated the tipoff, Kaleli requested that the source of the email be identified according to its IP number, but the court ultimately rejected the demand.
“The police tipped her off and the state caught her. This was the mise-en-scène,” said Hakkı Boltan, the co-president of the Free Journalists’ Initiative (ÖGİ), a Diyarbakır-based journalistic group that monitors press freedom violations and aids journalists who face legal proceedings in Kurdish provinces.
Taşkın is a journalist based in the city of Van who mainly covers social and cultural news. At the time of her arrest, she was working on several reports, including a story about the family of Sisê Bingöl. Authorities jailed the 78-year-old woman in June 2016 in Muş’s Varto district on accusations of being a “terrorist” before sentencing her to four years and two months in prison. Boltan told MMF that this type of reporting is often considered as threatening to the state as it reveals police violations. “The public has the right to be informed about this unjust imprisonment. This is what Seda was trying to do when she was targeted by the state.”
Ill treatment from police, threats from the prosecutor
Turkish authorities arrested Taşkın on 20 December 2017 before freeing her four days later. The prosecutor, however, filed an objection against the court’s release order. A month later, on 23 January, officers again arrested Taşkın in Ankara, where the journalist had gone to join her family.
In her defense, Taşkın told the court that police subjected her to a strip search after her initial arrest. “When I refused, they said they would force me,” she said via a judicial video conferencing system from Ankara’s Sincan Women Prison Facility, where she remains in custody pending trial. She was subjected to a second strip search before finally seeing her lawyer. “I was also physically beaten when I refused to get in the armoured vehicle. If I’m telling this, it’s because I want the court to take it into consideration,” she said.
The court didn’t appear greatly concerned.
Taşkın was also threatened after her initial release from custody. “The prosecutor told her ‘How can you be freed? You will see, we will file an objection’ in front of her lawyer as a witness,” Kaleli told the court.
The lawyer also said the evidence against her client was restricted to retweets and Facebook shares – mostly of news articles. There is not even a single article written by Taşkın in the case file, she said. “You may not like the agency where my client works. But this agency is still operating legally, and this is about freedom of expression and press freedom.”[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_single_image image=”100383″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]Touring villages with her camera
Included in the indictment as evidence was a “package” that a colleague sought to give Taşkın. There was a certain air of mystery to the private Instagram conversation between Taşkın and her colleague, Diyarbakır-based journalist and photographer Refik Tekin, but the item in question was only a fleece – and police could have ascertained the innocence of the matter had they clicked on the embedded link in the conversation.
Tekin told MMF that the pair had merely discussed the logistics of Taşkın receiving the fleece in Muş. He eventually sent the item of clothing to the prison in Ankara after she was jailed, but Taşkın was still unable to obtain it: The fleece is dark blue – a color that is banned in prison because it matches the uniforms of guards.
Tekin said Taşkın loves photography. She would tour villages around Lake Van in search of news and human stories. “She is a very friendly person. People in villages are usually somewhat shy, but they would immediately open up to Seda,” Tekin said. “She took photos of children in villages, women working in fields… Those were beautiful, very touching. They would tell a story. She would be on the top of the world when her photos appeared in [the now-closed newspaper] Özgürlükçü Demokrasi,” he said.
Her close friend Nimet Ölmez, also a Van-based reporter for Mezopotamya, said Taşkın’s picture of two children returning from school with their dirty clothes and large baskets instead of backpacks helped raise awareness about the precarious situation of children living in the impoverished villages of the region. “They were shared on social media for days. So many people called and asked us how they could help.”
But she admits that Taşkın’s love for photography was perhaps a bit on the excessive side. “She would take so many photos that all our memory sticks would fill up. She once went to a village to report on some shepherd. He had around 200 sheep, but Seda still managed to come back with 230 photos – more than one photo per sheep,” she joked. “I really miss fighting for photos, memory sticks and news with her.”
On 30 April, the court ruled against Taşkın’s release on the grounds that she doesn’t use the name on her ID card, Seher, in daily life, even though everyone, including her close family, calls her Seda.
The next hearing will be held on 2 July in Muş – a town that appears in a popular song with the lyrics “the road to Muş is uphill.” Rather than just Muş, it seems the song’s writers were talking about the road to justice in Turkey today.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-file-excel-o” color=”black” background_style=”rounded” size=”xl” align=”right”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Media freedom violations reported to MMF since 24 May 2014
[/vc_column_text][/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:1526396916736-92769289-9c57-0″ taxonomies=”8607″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
08 Mar 18 | News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_media_grid grid_id=”vc_gid:1520507629250-860b1635-f01a-8″ include=”98413,98412,98411,98410,98409,98408″][vc_column_text]The only online feminist news website in Turkey is marking International Women’s Day under state censorship. Access to the website of Diyarbakır-based Jin News (“Jin” meaning “woman” in Kurdish), which is entirely run by women and specifically focuses on news relating to women, was blocked seven times within just one week at the end of January. At present, the site is inaccessible from Turkey.
The pressure, however, hasn’t discouraged Jin News’ journalists. “We have always shown that we have alternatives, and we are continuing to show it,” Jin News Editor Beritan Elyakut told Index on Censorship. While relying on social media and the use of VPNs, Jin News announced a new TV channel to mark the symbolic day, which has a double significance for them. JINHA, the first news agency run by women in the entire country, was also established on an International Women’s Day six years ago.
Pressure was no stranger to them either: They were shut down not once but twice, more than any other news outlet in the country under the present state of emergency. First, JINHA was closed by decree in October 2016. Gazete Şujin, JINHA’s successor, was only allowed to exist for nine months before another decree ordered its closure in August 2017.
But still, from its ashes, Jin News was born, taking over JINHA’s legacy: a style of news writing that presents women “as subjects, not objects.” The site takes care to use conscientious language, such as using the word “murdered” instead of “killed” to emphasise male violence. They also avoid highlighting details that indirectly justify violence against women (by refusing, for example, to note that she was seeking a divorce) or providing unnecessary descriptive details in cases of sexual attack. Then there is the strict use of first names instead of family names – a practice adopted by the present article to provide a glimpse of their methodology.
“When covering women, we had to think until the smallest details. We chose not to employ the family name to break the perception that family lineage descended from men. If we say ‘Beritan Elyakut’ in the beginning of the article to introduce a person, we then use the name distinguishing that person as a subject,” Beritan said. Even the highest-ranking officials, including two former co-chairs of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) who are currently under arrest, Figen Yüksekdağ and Selahattin Demirtaş, wouldn’t escape the rule.
This also meant a different approach in the choice of topics. “We don’t just cover news on sexual attack, sexual abuse or harassment. We started to cover stories reflecting women as strong individuals. We reported on pioneering women. We focused on economy and ecology. We made women visible in politics, highlighted them and gave them a voice,” Beritan said. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-times” color=”black” background_style=”rounded” size=”xl” align=”right”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]
“Our people know how to live under difficult situations. Kurdish women know how to resist. JINHA was closed, and Şujin was created. Şujin was closed and Jin News was created, which means we can reinvent ourselves over and over.”
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Encouraging women to speak up
To ensure that women’s voices are not muted, Jin News uses exclusive testimonies and quotes from women in their reports. As she walks to the popular market of Bağlar in Diyarbakır, reporter Şehriban Aslan tells Index on Censorship that women’s reactions are always very positive when they introduce themselves as a Kurdish agency covering women.
Once she arrives at the market, Şehriban and her colleague, Rengin Azizoğlu, walk quietly as they search for women running stores. The subject is the destruction of a community health centre, which was turned into a police station by a government-appointed trustee after the municipality’s democratically elected co-mayors were thrown in jail.
The effect is immediate as they enter a gift shop. One of the vendors agrees to be interviewed. “There is this perception in society that a woman can’t work. You’ve broken it,” Şehriban tells her. “Absolutely,” the woman answers, without a flinch of hesitation. As the interview nears its end, Şehriban asks her if she has any messages to other women. “Women should absolutely work,” she says. “They shouldn’t submit to men.”
“Women feel comfortable and confident when they speak to us,” Şehriban says. “Being a Kurdish agency also helps.”
“Which outlet are you from?” a man asks her as she sneaks out of a shop. “We are the free media,” Şehriban says, using the expression that Kurds refer to their own media outlets. “Ah, you are more than welcome,” he replies.
Münevver Karademir, Jin News’ Kurdish-language editor, also stresses the importance of the encouragement factor. “When you give them confidence to express themselves, women embrace you,” Münevver says. “When you tell any shop vendor ‘I am an agency run by woman who works on the problems of women,’ her attitude becomes very different. She feels safe. She is able to tell you what she is going through.”
Jin News journalists are also eager to expand the know-how they are building with other outlets, especially male journalists. They have a project to prepare a dictionary on non-discriminatory news language. “We were planning to come together with men and organize training on ‘how to design a news story’ and ‘how to use women-friendly language in news articles’ but haven’t been able to due to the conditions [in the region],” Beritan says.
However, their mere presence has already started to raise some awareness. “Some journalists, men most of the time, ask us: ‘Would you check this story and see if we have used correct language?’ They now feel that concern,” she says. One of the most important successes for Beritan has been to show that women were more than capable of doing journalism – often better than men. “We saw that women were fast as well. But their speed also seeks to share a story in the best way possible. They were meticulous.”
Women journalist establish platform against pressure
According to Beritan, Jin News’ policy of collecting women’s voices alone was more successful in the east than the west of Turkey. This is the result of the strict “co-chair parity” policy launched by the HDP, which ensured that women assumed senior positions in Kurdish municipalities. However, after trustees occupied most HDP-led municipalities, Jin News not only lost its interlocutors – most trustees are men – but lost an important source of revenue. Indeed, many women co-chairs ensured that the municipality subscribed to their services and encouraged the agency’s activities.
Since the military crackdowns in urban centers in the region, journalists have become a target of state security agencies, and arrests and detentions have become common practices.
“The state wanted to seclude us at home through detentions. When that didn’t work, they tried to shut down the outlets entirely,” Beritan says as she learns that one of their reporters, Durket Süren, has been charged with “membership in and financing of a terrorist organisation” after being detained a few days earlier at a routine checkpoint. Durket was eventually released by a court but was subjected to a travel ban and ordered to sign in regularly at a police station.
Durket is hardly the only Jin News journalist facing criminal charges. Former JINHA reporter Zehra Doğan is currently serving a two-year, nine-month prison sentence for “spreading propaganda for a terrorist organisation.” She was convicted for publishing the testimony of a 10-year-old girl affected by the Turkish military operation on the town of Nusaybin in an article from December 2015. Also a painter, Zehra received jail time for “drawing Turkish flags on destroyed buildings” in a painting copied from a real photograph in which Turkish flags can be seen on buildings destroyed by Turkish forces. Beritan Canözer, the agency’s Istanbul reporter, and Aysel Işık have also served prison sentences. Many have been detained, and about 10 reporters are currently on trial. The agency also receives regular threats.
Ayşe Güney, a reporter for the Kurdish Mezopotamya Agency and spokeswoman for the Mezopotamya Women Journalists Platform, told Index on Censorship that state violence has become routine practice. “In a province like Şırnak, our reporters are constantly subjected to verbal harassment or threats. Many avoid going alone to villages or certain neighbourhoods. They are threatened, from being kidnapped to being abused or raped. Threats may be verbal for now, but there is a serious attempt to intimidate them,” she says.
The platform was established in 2017 on another symbolic day, May 3 Press Freedom Day, to ensure that women can fight together against common issues. Those include social issues – such as unemployment after the repeated closure of Diyarbakır-based Kurdish media outlets – but also against all kinds of violence. “Thanks to this association, we wanted to help our friends who are detained, arrested or subject to harassment from sources, attacked or abused by the police. We also wanted to make the pressure visible,” Ayşe says.
The latest woman journalist to be arrested by police is Seda Taşkın, who was reporting a story in the province of Muş. Seda was first released on probationary conditions, only to be arrested a month later in Ankara due to her reporting and tweets.
According to Ayşe, it is no coincidence that the women’s journalistic experiment began in Diyarbakır and not – as some might have expected – in Istanbul. “Our people know how to live under difficult situations. Kurdish women know how to resist. JINHA was closed, and Şujin was created. Şujin was closed and Jin News was created, which means we can reinvent ourselves over and over,” Ayşe says. “We are speaking here about women’s freedom and not gender equality. This is something that goes way beyond it.”
Ayşe also said she wished to make a call on all women journalists in Turkey to engage in solidarity. “There are almost no journalists here who haven’t had a trial opened against them. Either they have been in and out of prison or have to report at a police station every two or three or even five days. This means they can’t leave the city, which is becoming an open-air prison,” Ayşe says. “But it doesn’t happen only to Kurds anymore. It happens everywhere. So this is the time to act together.”[/vc_column_text][/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:1520507629256-32297f2b-810d-7″ taxonomies=”8607″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
