Journalism: Self-defense of society

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The first Kurdish newspaper was Kürdistan Gazetesi, which was published by Mikdad Mithad Bedirhan in Cairo on Apr 22, 1898, during the Ottoman era. It was banned immediately after its publication and could only be smuggled across borders secretly. With the Republic era, the press that did not serve the rulers always faced anti-democratic practices.

With the emergence of a strong social vein in Kurdish politics, the Özgür Gündem newspaper, which began its publication life in May 1992 to reach a wide audience, became a constant target of the rulers of the state. Despite the killing of child-aged newspaper distributors, reporters, the arrest of its employees, and its repeated closures, the newspaper, which started again under different names, created the Free Press (Özgür Basın) tradition through its stubbornness.

On Dec 3, 1994, although the İstanbul and Ankara offices were bombed simultaneously by the written order of then Prime Minister Tansu Çiller, we are talking about a newspaper that was published the next day. In essence, this newspaper engraved on its masthead a defense of truth that produces, resists, and never gives up against pressure, closures, and censorship.

‘Crime machine’

When the AKP government lost the opportunity to form a government alone after its defeat in the June 7, 2015 elections, it ended the “resolution process” with Kurdish political actors. After the table was overturned, on July 24, 2015, the day celebrating the lifting of censorship, which is known as Press Freedom Struggle Day, the government spokesperson at the time, Bülent Arınç, said, “Özgür Gündem and Evrensel, among others, many newspapers… these are crime machines.” This threat, coming from the most authoritative voices of the government, was a signal flare indicating the end of the relatively liberal environment and the fact that both Kurdish politics and its media would take the lion’s share of the pressure.

The conflicts that started afterwards spread to cities, and as a result of the security forces’ “disproportionate use of force” in civilian settlements, a heavy situation emerged in the centers of Şırnak, Cizre, Nusaybin, Sur, and Yüksekova, with spatial, social, and humanitarian losses. With the curfews declared in the provinces of the region, Özgür Gündem became a target for covering the events in the conflict zones. During this period, the newspaper’s reporters, editors, editor-in-chief, and managing editor faced investigations and lawsuits almost every issue, initiated by the prosecutors.

Second home

On Mar 27, 2016, when I started working as the responsible managing editor at the newspaper, we began visiting Çağlayan Courthouse, which had almost become my “second home,” every day with lawyers due to the lawsuits filed one after another. We were feeding ourselves with whatever was on the prosecutors’ “menu” during the day. I was a marked defender of a marked newspaper. Leaning on Turkey’s intellectual heritage, when the efforts of those who couldn’t make their voices heard in the narrowing social ground and who could not unite against the repressive tendencies spontaneously turned into solidarity, the sword of Damocles hanging over the newspaper became visible.

On May 3, 2016, World Press Freedom Day, the On-Duty Managing Editor Campaign, which began, went down in world press history. This campaign, lasting 96 days, involved 100 people, including well-known and respected intellectuals, scientists, academics, writers, artists, and journalists, who each took turns as symbolic for a day. The campaign unhesitatingly defended the right of society to access information and press freedom.

Solidarity

I was happy that my solitude at the courthouse had come to an end because my fellow comrades were increasing day by day! The feeling of loneliness was replaced by a sense of ownership. In one of these trials, on May 31, 2016, Nurcan Baysal, Celal Başlangıç, Ahmet Abakay, Fehim Işık, and Lawyer Eşber Yağmurdereli, who were investigated for participating in the campaign, gave their statements at the İstanbul Courthouse. After Lawyer Yağmurdereli had given his statement to the prosecutor, I asked him in the corridor, “What did the prosecutor ask you?” Yağmurdereli replied, “The man asked me, ‘Did you make your decision after seeing the news?’ I told him, ‘I’m not familiar with visuals. I’m a lawyer, I don’t understand journalism. I’m blind, I didn’t see any news, I participated in the vigil for solidarity.’” He then added, “The guy doesn’t know I’m blind,” and we both burst out laughing. We laughed and cheered up in the corridor in front of the police officers.

The ‘conquest’ of the newspaper

After the coup attempt, on August 16, 2016, Özgür Gündem Newspaper was temporarily shut down by the İstanbul 8th Criminal Court on the grounds of “propagating terrorist organization ideology.” In fact, the public was accustomed to this “reason” and was aware that the real reason for the closure was the coverage of events taking place in the Kurdish provinces.

The attitude of the civil, official, and “robocop” police who came to “conquer” the newspaper building was a reflection of the state’s way of showing those who both benefit from and work against it their place. That day, it was so obvious that they were determined to make us regret everything, that when Zana (Bilir) Kaya and I arrived at the police station at night, we let out a sigh of relief. On Oct 29, the newspaper was completely shut down with Statutory Decree No. 675.

The political brother!

I was not brought to the first two hearings of the main case of the newspaper, in which 92 lawsuits were combined, on the grounds of insufficient vehicles and personnel. There were also times when I was taken to the courthouse for another case, but was returned to prison without being brought to the courtroom. In the courthouse’s detention cell, other prisoners were mocking me, saying, “How can they do this to the political brother?” Due to hearings scheduled on the same day as the family visit days, I missed my family visits. The newspaper’s owner, Kemal Sancılı, who was also tried in the same case and later arrested, was brought from Urfa to Silivri Prison. Despite all our efforts, we were not allowed to stay together. This must have been the state’s approach to rehabilitation; my lawyer and I were not even bothered with replies to our petitions. The General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Houses of the Ministry of Justice was responsible for the issues concerning Prison No. 9, but we received no response, either positive or negative.

Confusing the newspapers!

Shortly before my arrest, I had been called to the police station. Following the instructions of the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, an investigation was opened on three articles published in BirGün Newspaper, accusing them of insulting the President. When I saw the petition, I couldn’t believe it. I was the managing editor of BirGün! How nice! Two newspapers, two salaries, and the country’s leftists are so generous, my dear! In my statement, I said, “I’m sorry, it’s not possible for me to be responsible for two newspapers at the same time.”

I thought the investigation would be dropped, believing that a clear material mistake would be corrected. I was wrong. They probably thought, “We’ve found a fool, if we load all the opposition publications onto him, maybe he’ll be broken.” When I gave my statement via videoconference from inside, witnessing the judiciary’s determination to go all out to please the government, I proudly testified that when I told the judge, “If you click on Uncle Google on the computer in front of you, it will tell you who was the managing editor at that time,” all hell broke loose. The judge, with furrowed brows as if to say, “Are you teaching me how to do my job?” snapped, “Get out of here.” Before I could say, “Your Honor, I didn’t want to unnecessarily disturb the high judiciary, I was just trying to correct a simple mistake…,” the screen went dark.

No questions

During the hearings I attended as a detainee, I emphasized the situation in the country, pointing out that the mafioso rhetoric unleashed as a result of the government’s policy of turning the country into a rose garden without thorns was reflected in the threat made to the Peace Academics: “We will spill blood in streams and shower in your blood,” and I added, “Those who plot to take human lives walk around freely, but journalists are being arrested.” The judge cut me off, saying, “What you are saying is irrelevant to our topic.”

But what was our topic? Since the matter at hand was news, you could have asked me about it, and I would have defended it. But I didn’t hear a single question related to any news report in any hearing. No question or accusation was made based on the data of any published article. No accusation or claim was made based on lies, manipulation, or distortion. One cannot help but wonder if the judge, who was not concerned with justice but perhaps with the state’s interests, realized that the ‘organization’ the prosecutor tried to link to the case through a cut-and-paste method had no relevance to the matter at hand.

Mother’s anger

This short imprisonment, being aware that it was the price of the society’s struggle to preserve and defend its existence against the government, makes you look at your family in a different way. Your family, which is the foundation of the culture you were born into and shaped by, may have normalized the detentions and trials due to your past political troubles, but arrest was a new situation for them as well. Unlike the extended family, which is close to the government, it is inevitable that the relationships in the immediate family, which survives on its own, would be affected.

I noticed my mother’s anger at the open visit when she was upset with the relatives’ indifference to asking after me. While we were talking about the general passivity in society, a guard, who was watching us by the door, leaned over to my ear and ‘politely’ asked us not to sit next to each other in the chairs. When he saw the spark in my mother’s eyes, he stepped back. The presence of a subject who perceives everything through the lens of the government and its opposition, thinking without a filter, was empowering. When my mother said in Kurdish, “Jiber em bêdeng dimînin ev şaqiz dibin” (“They are spoiled because we remain silent”), my brother Hasan and I looked at each other. My brother, who was almost my only link to the outside world, had been coming to Silivri every week for fifteen months, leaving his job behind, and he felt rewarded by his persistence when the books he brought were allowed into the prison. He considered it a small victory.

‘National interest’

After my release… On January 20, 2018, one day after the Turkish Armed Forces entered Afrin, the then ‘low-profile’ Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım issued a 15-point instruction list, explaining to the media where it should stand. Unlike the media that lined up in conformity, such as the newspaper I worked for, Özgürlükçü Demokrasi, we reported the information coming from the war zone with the attitude of “If we don’t give it, who will?” If we had censored and handed it over, we would have been serving an approach that legitimized the operation by acting as though we were a state-controlled media, following orders. By opposing the militaristic policies that forced society into obedience, we made our mark in history and became a ‘thorn,’ paying the price for it. On March 28, the newspaper was shut down, and a trustee was appointed. Journalists, who were arrested along with the printing house workers, carried on this tradition by wearing the ‘shirt of fire’ with pride.

Musa Çitil’s persistence

Then there was the Deputy Commander of the Gendarmerie General Command, Major General Musa Çitil, who never let go of the journalists. In February 2016, after the publication of an article in Özgür Gündem titled “The name of the siege is ‘Flag 12,’ and its leader is Musa Çitil” about the clashes in Diyarbakır’s Sur district, Çitil filed a lawsuit against me and six other journalists on charges of “targeting individuals who have fought in the fight against terrorism” and “propaganda for a terrorist organization” for sharing the article on social media.

Since the notification did not reach me, I was taken from my cell to the Silivri Prosecutor’s Office without knowing what I was being accused of. In my defense, I stated that I was not working at the newspaper on the date the article was published, and I was not the person responsible for the website. Even though we were acquitted in 2019, Çitil took the case to the Court of Appeals. On June 30, 2021, the Diyarbakır Regional Court of Appeal, 2nd Criminal Chamber, upheld the acquittal decision of the local court and dismissed the case. We barely got rid of Çitil.

The penalty of militarism

On February 15, 2021, during the final hearing of the main trial of Özgür Gündem at the İstanbul 23rd High Criminal Court, the Turkish Armed Forces launched an operation into the Garê region of the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government. Eren Keskin, Kemal Sancılı, and I were sentenced to 6 years and 3 months on charges of “membership in a terrorist organization,” while Zana Kaya was sentenced to 1 year and 13 months for “terrorist propaganda.” The judge announcing the verdict appeared quite uneasy. In an atmosphere where militarism had reached its peak, with drums and horns blaring, it was hard to imagine that the court would not be influenced.

When we exited the courtroom, saying, “As expected,” a police officer standing in the corner, who had been watching me, grabbed my arm at the door and said, “The prosecutor is waiting for you; you need to give a statement.” Was it a joke, or was it some sort of bonus from the judiciary? Apparently unaffected by my “What’s going on, my friend? We’ve already received our sentences, what’s the statement for?” look, he replied, “Please, go ahead.” I told the prosecutor that I hadn’t received the notice, but that didn’t help. I was being accused because of posts shared on social media using the newspaper’s name. My statement that the newspaper had been shut down and that anyone could open such an account was not found satisfactory by the prosecutor, who seized my phone. Shocked by the prosecutor’s attitude, who asked, “How do I know it’s not you?” I was left dumbfounded. This must have been the judiciary’s adaptation to the government’s depraved language.

Closed doors

The identity of the newspaper you were ‘involved with’ sticks to you and brings with it certain consequences. Your life and relationships narrow down; people approach you with a distant and cautious attitude. It is heartbreaking to witness that the methods used by the government to make society weak and submissive are yielding results. Yet, it is important to acknowledge the few individuals who remain steadfast and supportive, particularly colleagues, who continue to stand up for what is right.

It is difficult to see many doors closing in your face and to realize that your efforts to survive through ventures in different fields are unsuccessful because of your ‘suspicious’ identity. Similarly, when articles or analyses you submit to some opposition publications are not published or are sent back for censorship, it becomes disheartening. In addition to the attacks developed by the government’s coercive and ideological apparatuses, another reminder of your ‘blacklisted’ status is the travel ban, which prevents you from attending courses or events as an invited guest of media organizations abroad.

Your literary works are also rejected by dozens of publishing houses. In the intimidating atmosphere of the time, you are ignored with the comfort of thinking, ‘Let’s not get into trouble, what’s the risk?’ This is because both the writer and the issues they address are considered ‘sensitive.’ Thus, you are condemned to a life of crawling in the dirt.

This article was produced with financial support from the Journalism and International Media Center (OsloMet-JMIC) at Oslo Metropolitan University. The content of the article is solely the responsibility of IPS Communication Foundation/bianet and does not reflect the views of OsloMet-JMIC in any way.

(İK/VC/VK)