12 Feb 18 | 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_single_image image=”97954″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]In hindsight, there were many clues that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government was making preparations to eliminate Turkey’s independent media even before it launched a massive crackdown in July 2016. But perhaps the biggest tip-off was the March 2016 police raid and seizure of Zaman, Turkey’s largest daily newspaper.
At the time, Abdullah Bozkurt was bureau chief in the capital Ankara for the paper’s English-language edition, Today’s Zaman. On March 4 of that year, Bozkurt found himself struggling to put out the newspaper’s final edition – even as he watched on live television as police in riot gear fired tear gas and water cannons on protesters and stormed Zaman’s headquarters 220 miles (350 km) to the west in Istanbul.
Shortly before court-appointed trustees seized control of the newspaper’s computer system, Bozkurt wrote the headline for the last cover of Today’s Zaman. “Shameful Day for Free Press in Turkey,” it read. “Zaman Media Group Seized.”
Zaman had been in Erdogan’s crosshairs for some time for its sympathies with the Gülen movement, an opposition group affiliated with a U.S.-based Islamic cleric that Erdogan has branded a “terrorist” organization. It had particularly angered the government for its aggressive coverage of a 2013 corruption investigation that led to the arrests of three sons of ministers in then-prime minister Erdogan’s government, Bozkurt says.
“Initially, they started calling in public rallies [for people] not to purchase our newspaper,” says Bozkurt, in an interview with Global Journalist. “Amazingly, at the time our circulation went up because we were one of the few media outlets in Turkey that were still covering the corruption investigation…later they started putting pressure on advertisers. That didn’t work out either because our circulation was quite high.”
After Zaman’s closure, Bozkurt briefly opened his own news agency. A few weeks later, on July 15, 2016, a faction of the military attempted to overthrow Erdogan. The coup was put down in a matter of hours. But in its aftermath, Erdogan unleashed a nationwide purge.
Over 100,000 government workers were fired and 47,000 people were jailed on suspicion of terrorism, according to a tally by Human Rights Watch. An additional 150 journalists and media workers were also jailed, giving Turkey the highest number of jailed journalists in the world. Many others fled the country.
Bozkurt was among those who chose to flee rather than face arrest. Ten days after the failed coup, he left for Sweden. The day after he left, the offices of his fledgling news agency were raided by police. Police later searched the home of Bozkurt’s 79-year-old mother and detained her for a day. Bozkurt’s wife and three children later followed him.
In Sweden, Bozkurt received threats via social media and a Wild West-style ‘wanted photo’ of him was published by pro-Erdogan newspapers and the state-run news agency. The government has brought anti-state charges against 30 of his former Zaman colleagues, seeking as much as three life sentences in jail.
Bozkurt, 47, now writes regular columns for the news site Turkishminute.com and works at the Stockholm Center for Freedom, a rights group focused on Turkey. He spoke with Global Journalist’s Denitsa Tsekova about his last weeks in Turkey and his exile. Below, an edited version of their interview:
Bozkurt: I was based in the capital, Ankara, but our newspaper’s headquarters was in Istanbul. The storming of our newspaper happened in Istanbul, we were watching on TV. We were on the phone talking to our colleagues in Istanbul, trying to find what’s going on, what we can do. The police were coming into our Istanbul’s newsrooms, ransacking the place, and shutting the internet service. It was up to me and my colleagues in the Ankara office to write the stories. We were actually printing the last edition of Zaman from Ankara. I was the one who drew the headline in the English edition and we managed to get out the last free edition. In the Turkish edition, we managed to finish and print the first one, but the second and the third edition couldn’t make it to the printing place. It was interrupted by the police and the government caretakers who took over the company.
GJ: There were protests after the closure of Zaman. What happened?
Bozkurt: It was on the day when the takeover judgment by the court was publicized. We didn’t call our readers to come and protest.
We knew it might be very dangerous because the government uses very harsh measures often rubber bullets, pepper spray and pressurized water against peaceful protesters. We didn’t want to put them on the risk.
Around 400 people showed up and they were beaten and targeted brutally by the police who stormed the building.
GJ: What was the last article you wrote for Today’s Zaman?
Bozkurt: It was about prisons. When I wrote that article I didn’t know the government was taking over the company, it was written a day before.
I talked to many people in the government and some from the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture. Something was very, very off because the government planned to build a lot of prisons in Turkey under the disguise of a modernization plan.
However, when you look at the numbers, it didn’t really match. We didn’t need that many new prisons in Turkey, but the government was making a projection that the prison population would increase.
When the European officials asked the justice ministry on what basis were they making this projection, they did not have a response.
In hindsight, I could understand it was because they were preparing a new mass prosecution in Turkey and they needed more prisons to put these people away. Even the prisons we have now are not enough; people are living in very crowded cells. After the coup, the government even granted amnesty for some 40,000 convicted felons… just to make space for the political prisoners and journalists.
GJ: How did you decide to leave?
Bozkurt: I actually hung around for a while after the failed coup, because I thought eventually things will settle down, and I wasn’t planning to move out of Turkey at all.
[Ten days] after the coup, the government issued an arrest warrant against 42 journalists on a single day. I realized this is going to get worse, and I said it’s time for me to move out of Turkey.
It was a rash decision, I didn’t even know to which country I would go, so I had to go to Germany first and then to Sweden.
My mother was getting old, she has some health issues and I wanted to be there for her. But it wasn’t up to me. Sweden was a stopover for me, I wasn’t planning on staying permanently.
The day after I left Turkey, the police raided my office in Ankara, so it was the right decision. If I was there I would have been detained and dragged to jail.
GJ: Were you getting threats?
Bozkurt: I was getting threats all the time. If you are a critical and independent journalist, you will get them. That’s the price you pay for it. Sometimes you try to be vigilant, you try to be careful and you just ignore that kind of threats or pressure from the government or pro-government circles.
But after the massive crackdown after the coup attempt, I thought it’s no longer safe for me. I moved out alone, I didn’t even take my family, because I thought they will stay in Turkey and I can hang around abroad and then come back to Turkey. That was my plan.
After a while, the Turkish government started going after the family members of the journalists. Bülent Korucu was a chief editor of a national daily [Yarına Bakıs], which was also shut down by the government, and he was facing an arrest warrant. The police couldn’t find him and they arrested his wife, Hacer Korucu. She stayed in prison for a month on account of her husband. At that moment, I thought my family is no longer safe either, so I decided to extract them out of the country.
GJ: Was your family directly threatened?
Bozkurt: When I moved out of Turkey I kept writing about what’s going on in Turkey. I guess they felt uncomfortable with my writings.
It was part of the intimidation campaign to go after family members, including my mother. She is a 79-year-old, she lives alone but sometimes my sister helps her out. Police raided her home in my hometown of Bandirma in December 2016, searched the house and placed her in detention for a day. She was questioned about me.
Why does she deserve that? They want me to shut up, to be silent even though I feel safe abroad.
GJ: What will happen if you go back to Turkey?
Bozkurt: Of course I will get arrested. They even posted a “wanted” picture of me, and it was run in the pro-government dailies and in the state news agency. It’s like in the old Western movies: there is a picture of me and where I live. I have no prediction when I can go back to Turkey. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/tOxGaGKy6fo”][/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) and we’ll send you our weekly newsletter about our activities defending free speech. We won’t share your personal information with 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_separator color=”black”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”6″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”2″ element_width=”12″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1517591299623-14a913d2-eca2-3″ taxonomies=”22142″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
05 Feb 18 | News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
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Dihaber reporters Erdoğan Alayumat (L) and Nuri Akman face up to 45 years in prison on terror and espionage charges.
All eyes turned to Erdoğan Alayumat when he appeared on the screen of the judicial teleconference system of a court in the southern province of Hatay on 2 February, beaming in from a prison 800 kilometres to the north on Turkey’s Black Sea coast. For someone facing up to 45 years in prison on terror and espionage charges, his face seemed serene and composed, his voice calm and collected.
“Had I been spying, there should be proof to show when, to whom and how I sent this information,” Alayumat told the judges of the Hatay second heavy penal court, displaying his journalistic reflex to remind the court that, like any news article, the principles of basic information shouldn’t be lacking in any indictment. It was a quick journalism 101 course to explain that his very job was the thing on trial. “I work as a journalist and report on anything I consider that has news value. I am also remunerated per piece by the agency,” he said.
Alayumat, a 30-year-old reporter working for the shuttered pro-Kurdish outlet Dicle Medya News Agency (Dihaber), was detained on July 15, 2017, alongside a younger colleague, Nuri Akman, who was assigned by the agency to spend a week shadowing Alayumat to gain experience. After spending 13 days in custody, Alayumat was arrested for “procuring confidential state documents for political or military espionage purposes” and “membership in a terrorist organization” and sent to prison, while Akman was released on probation. During the first hearing, the court ruled that Alayumat would remain in detention, and maintained the probationary restrictions on Akman until the next hearing on 25 April.
The taboo of reporting on aid to Islamists in Syria
Prosecutors in Turkey have been presenting journalistic activities as terrorism for a long time, especially since authorities began prosecuting pro-Kurdish outlets as part of the “KCK press trial.” All of the outlets targeted have been closed by successive emergency decrees following a coup attempt in July 2016. Dihaber, founded after its predecessor DİHA was closed by emergency decree in October 2016, was itself was shut down in August 2017. Their successor, Mezopotamya Agency, continues to be targeted with access bans on its website and trials against many of its journalists.
The authorities’ decision to pursue journalists as spies is based on-the-fly definitions of what facts are illicit and harmful to the “security of the state”. While working in Hatay, a multicultural province that borders conflict-ridden parts of Syria, Alayumat had been reporting on allegations that supplies were sent to Islamist groups by Turkey’s intelligence agency, the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), as well as the construction of a wall on the Syrian border. Those reports and photographs – some of which were not even taken by him but downloaded from the Internet – have been presented by prosecutors as evidence of his “crime”.
“Erdoğan Alayumat’s detention is like the premise of the situation we are in today,” his lawyer Tugay Bek told Index on Censorship, referring to Turkey’s joint military operation with opposition fighters in Syria’s Afrin. “Alayumat was investigating how some of these groups [fighting in Syria] were trained and provided logistic supplies by the National Intelligence Organization. These claims, which were rumours and hard to assess back then, are today openly accepted without any need for concealment. They’re even saying to critics, ‘What is there to be against about?’ Alayumat was reporting on whether there was or not such a militia power. We are seeing today that there was,” Bek said.
Reporting on MİT’s activities have become taboo in the wake of the discovery of four trucks that were carrying weapons to Syria in January 2015. Far from denying allegations that the trucks belonged to MİT, the government said the weapons were destined for Turkmen groups fighting in Syria but that reporting the news represented a disclosure of state secrets. When footage and photos showing the content of the trucks were published a few months later by the daily Cumhuriyet, prosecutors were instructed to take strong action. The then-editor-in-chief, Can Dündar, was imprisoned along with Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gül. Dündar, who faces up to 25 years in jail on espionage charges for publishing the story, has been living in Germany since his release by a constitutional court decision, but would face arrest if he returns to Turkey.
Former journalist and main opposition Republican People’s party (CHP) lawmaker Enis Berberoğlu was sentenced to 25 years in prison last year for purportedly providing Cumhuriyet with the video that showed the weapons found in the trucks. The sentence was quashed by an appeals court, but Berberoğlu remains in detention during a retrial that began in December 2017.
In this context, Alayumat’s report on a storehouse which MİT was suspected of using to supply weapons by night and provide training to Syrian opposition groups by day represented high-risk coverage. However, for the charge of espionage to be valid, the prosecution must also show which groups benefited from the exclusive knowledge of the report, his lawyer said.
“If there is some sort of espionage, there should be a recipient. Although emails and WhatsApp messages are in the police’s possession, there is no evidence as to whom [this information] was sent to or where. [The prosecution] feels no need to prove the claims,” Bek said.
Alayumat told the court that everything he did was sent to a media organisation. He rejected the accusation that the photographs of the storehouse were to be used for espionage. “When you prepare a news report, you also need pictures. [People] brought me there, I took pictures and interviewed the people in the area. These pictures were taken for reporting,” he said.
He also complained about a serious factual mistakes in the indictment. The indictment alleged that he had joined “the youth structures of a terrorist organisation” during his university years, he said, indicating that this would have been impossible: “I left primary school in grade 4. I had to support my family. I finished primary school years later through distance education. As I didn’t have any university life, this statement is wrong.”
Police aim to beat murder confession out of young reporter
Reports that Alayumat was subject to ill-treatment and torture at a prison in the Mediterranean district of Tarsus made the news a few months after he was detained. His lawyer filed a complaint, upon which Alayumat was transferred to a prison on the opposite coast of the country. He was subject to diverse forms of punishment including solitary confinement and beatings, reports said.
Akman, a 23-year-old reporter who studies law at Dicle University in Diyarbakır, also suffered ill-treatment by police officers. His protests at his improper detention procedures and insistence at calling his lawyer were met with beatings, he said. “Nine-ten police officers battered me,” Akman said, adding that officers also forced him to admit that he killed two policemen in Hatay. “When I told them that I was an anti-militarist and against the killing of people, I was again subject to physical violence.” Akman said he was taken to a doctor for a medical report but brought back without being permitted to see the physician.
Akman, who despite some nerves before the hearing, smiled amiably and gave an impassioned defence to the court.
He said he intended to spend a week with Alayumat and earn a little money by doing reports. “There is an ongoing war on the other side of the border, so we wanted to report on how people living in bordering towns were affected,” he said, explaining that all the notes and pictures he took were intended for reporting. “I am studying law and I had to follow hundreds of cases when I worked as a judicial reporter in Diyarbakır over the course of one year. I am appalled by these accusations. I don’t accept them.”
To defend themselves, both Alayumat and Akman had to defend that their reporting was not a crime, which is the irony of the situation of journalism in Turkey. Journalists on trial face allegations which question the essence of their job. The expression “journalism is not a crime” has never been more significant for any other profession as it now is for journalism in Turkey.
“I have filed hundreds of reports,” Alayumat told the court. “If you can just look at them, you will see that they are nothing but news reports. What I have been doing is journalism.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”3″ element_width=”12″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1517838504081-b3f4f9d3-a9c1-8″ taxonomies=”8607″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
24 Jan 18 | Events
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Both before and after the state of emergency that followed the botched coup in 2016, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has shown increasing authoritarian tendencies, rolling back an essentially weak democracy. Now a truly authoritarian regime is in place and instigates multiple attacks against fundamental rights and democratic institutions, such as arbitrary arrests and prosecutions of critical voices, extensive use of emergency decrees, massive purges of the state institutions and the witch hunt against the Academics for Peace, signatories of the Peace petition. As it is generally the case, free speech and academic freedom have been major casualties of this authoritarian drift. Gathering academics, lawyers and human rights defenders, this panel will offer a critical insight into current legal and political developments in Turkey and discuss the way forward in the defence of freedom of expression and academic freedom in the country.
Panel 1 – 14.30 – 16.00 Free Speech under Threat in Turkey: A Legal Approach
Chair: Noémi Lévy-Aksu (Birkbeck College)
Ayse Bingöl (Media Legal Defence): The criminalisation of speech under state of emergency regime.
Bill Bowring (Birkbeck College, Professor of Law): Recent Strasbourg case law on freedom of expression in Turkey.
Oya Aydın (Lawyer): What are the Academics for Peace accused of?
Panel 2 – 16.15 – 17.30 Trial Observation, Legal Intervention and Advocacy
Chair: Mehmet Uğur (University of Greenwich)
Georgia Nash (Article 19)
Sarah Clarke (Pen International)
Hanna Machlin (Index on Censorship)[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]
When: Tuesday 30 January 2018, 2:30-5:30pm
Where: Birkbeck College, London (Map)
Tickets: Free. Register here
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23 Jan 18 | Academic Freedom, News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”97694″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Since January 2016 the Academics for Peace case has become one of the symbols of the crackdown on democracy in Turkey.
No critical voices are spared in the repression: MPs, journalists, lawyers, human rights activists, students and many others are detained and/or have been prosecuted for their opinions and activities.
Each week brings new politically-motivated trials, where anonymous citizens and prominent figures of Turkey’s political and cultural life are faced with the most serious of criminal charges. Fundamental rights are put in the dock and go on trial and systematically abused. The week beginning 4 December was no exception, with trials targeting Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) politicians, dozens of journalists and the first hearings of scholars connected to Academics for Peace.
Academics for Peace are university professors and graduate students who signed a peace petition entitled We Will Not Be a Party To This Crime in January 2016. This statement denounced the government’s violations of human rights in the Kurdish regions of Turkey, demanded that access to these areas be granted to independent national and international observers and called for negotiations to secure a fair and lasting peace. The petition was initially signed by 1,128 academics and grew to 2,020 in the weeks after it was released. Since then, the signatories have suffered from multiple forms of repression, including criminal and administrative investigations, detention, dismissals and revocation of their passports. As of December 2017, more than 400 academics have been dismissed and hundreds of PhD students have lost their scholarships.
The repression is now reaching a new stage as signatories have been brought before the Istanbul High Criminal Court. Hundreds have been charged with spreading “terrorist propaganda” under Article 7(2) of Turkey’s Anti-Terror Law, which could mean up to seven-and-a-half years in prison. While the indictment has been levelled at the academics as a group, the hearings are individual and distributed over several months. The first hearings were held simultaneously in three different rooms of the Çağlayan courthouse on 5 and 7 December. They offered an insight not just into the deep flaws of the justice system, but also illustrated the determination of the academics to face this new ordeal with firmness and solidarity.
The week started with a day of events organised by the Academics for Peace co-ordination and the education trade union Eğitim-Sen in Istanbul. Meanwhile, several demonstrations and statements of support were released from Europe and the US. On the first day of the hearings, a press statement was organised in front of the courtroom. Besides the defendants, dozens of academics and several international observers were present. While only a few could attend the hearings due to the limited capacity of the rooms, numerous academics and students spent their days at the courthouse to support their colleagues.
The succession of hearings gave an insight into the diversity of the signatories of the petition. PhD students, young lecturers and well-known professors were brought to the court, while a few defendants now settled abroad could not attend. Although all the defendants in that week’s hearing came from two universities in Istanbul, many did not even know each other and greeted their alleged partners in crime at the doors of the courtroom, united by the smallest possible common denominator and the only ground for their criminal charge: their signature on the peace petition.
Lawyers had no difficulties in demonstrating the inconsistencies and blatant errors in the indictment. Incomplete or erroneous references to European cases related to freedom of expression, press articles and governmental statements were provided in lieu of evidence, mistranslated terms in English or Kurdish were among the mistakes most often quoted by the defendants’ lawyers. Beyond that, they insisted that the indictment was irrelevant and criticised the absence of any concrete evidence to support the charge of terror propaganda. Lawyers also reminded the court of the national and international legal texts, conventions and jurisprudence protecting freedom of expression. They underlined that critical thinking was essential to academic work and that by criticising the state, the defendants had behaved as one would expect of intellectuals. While a majority of academics indicated that they would not offer a statement at this first hearing, some presented a defence that followed the arguments of their lawyers, sometimes providing additional information on their personal and/or academic motivations for signing the petition and sharing how absurd they thought the case was. All the cases were adjourned to a later date, stretching from late December until May.
While the case the Academics for Peace sheds light on the persecution of critical scholars in Turkey, not only academic freedom is on trial there. Indeed, the first hearings gave an opportunity to the academics and their lawyers to remind the court of the context in which the peace petition was released: strong statements recalled how violence escalated in the Kurdish region of Turkey after the June 2015 elections and illustrated the impact of state repressions on civilians in the region — endless curfews, unlawful killing of children, corpses abandoned in the streets or kept in refrigerators, destruction of whole neighbourhoods in Cizre or Diyarbakir. Quoting the reports issued by national and international organisations, including the UN, these defences brought to the forefront the realities behind the words of the petition. Beyond this, some lawyers and defendants used the concepts of state violence, discrimination and racism to contextualise the last few years in the longer history of repression targeting the Kurdish region. As in many of the ongoing political trials in Turkey, the hearings turned into a denunciation of the multiple levels of state repression. The prosecutor and judges showed little reaction to these harsh critiques. Obviously, there was little to object to: like many journalists on trial, the academics were charged for making public what was true and ignored by none.
Finally, these hearings revealed yet again that the justice system in Turkey is at a breaking point. As the prosecutor who authored the indictment remained invisible, it was obvious that the judges and prosecutors had little familiarity with the cases. Appearing increasingly weary of the repetitive character of the hearings, they made a compulsive and ostensible use of their phones while the lawyers and defendants were talking. While the lawyers emphasised that the unique indictment should have resulted in a unique, collective trial, this demand was rejected by the court and a large part of the hearings were devoted to copy-pasting the charges and defences for each of the defendants.
Joining the long list of criminal cases against citizens who dared to express their opposition to the government and its policies, the trial of the Academics for Peace is a new illustration of the political use and abuse of justice to silent all critical voices in Turkey.
[/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) and we’ll send you our weekly newsletter about our activities defending free speech. We won’t share your personal information with 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_separator color=”black”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
