Freedom, freedom of press, or otherwise

Ahmet Şık and Nedim Şener were sent to jail early this morning. Both investigative journalists with different backgrounds or ideologies, they had one common characteristic: pursuit of truth.

And truth is a dangerous subject matter in Turkey.

Nedim Şener is rather known in local and International media as an investigative journo and with his recent books on the background of Hrant Dink murder.
So, I will concentrate on Ahmet Şık and his work, and attempt to shed some light on why this case is becoming a stage in the series of actions by Turkish state to oppress opinion makers in the country.

Ahmet is another investigative journalist whose kind is rarely seen in Turkish media. He has an academical and scrupulous attitude towards his work, and in spite of common tradition in Turkish maid, he always works with the evidence and try to reach the truth no matter what the rewards or the dangers of doing so. He has co-written a book about Ergenekon in Turkey, about ultra-nationalistic and interventionist formations within the military. But he was also very critical on the details of Ergenekon indictment for lacking the real connections between the organization and latest crimes of hate and discrimination in the country.

Last, but of course not the least, he has a finished but not published book on the religious community of Fethullah Gülen and their connections within the state mechanism. And a draft of this book "surfaces" in the computers of other journalists accused of being Ergenekon members.

This morning he was arrested by a court claiming that, Ahmet Şık, a Marxist, was a member of an ultra-nationalist organization and "to arouse animosity and hate in public in general".

The only evidence so far known to connect Ahmet to this organization is a draft of a book found in an other journalist's computer who is yet to be convicted of any connection to this organization himself. Second accusation; "to arouse...." is an open-ended and undemocratic code in itself. One can prove that, say against myself, in many articles written by me, here on this blog. Freedom of expression does not cover only love letters. Writing in itself is provocative, and loses its purpose when stripped of its fervor. This article covers an area left behind since the latest changes in criminal law in Turkey, which traditionally served to oppress any and every kind of opposition in the country.

Many journalists in Turkey as well as many International organizations are considering these arrests as a violation of freedom of expression and slam Turkish government with requests to modernize laws concerning freedom of speech. I agree, but my point for the sake of this article is different.

I have just learned that all questions asked to him during interrogations and arraignment were concerning his writings. The facts about his work, his investigations, and the manner the investigations were handled by the prosecutor's office, leaves one but only one conclusion: Ahmet Şık was arrested for his opinions and for the dangers the status-quo perceived as a result of his investigative work. The court did not come up with one single conceivable evidence other than hearsay or opinions of other suspects.

And now, obviously, one could think "what about the previous arrests?" Just because they had more nationalistic views why wouldn't we give them the benefit of doubt?

As a rule of thumb, when a system loses its validity in judicial proceedings, and if a system does not function on presumption of innocence and starts chain-accusing people based on the actions of non-convicted others, one cannot speak of a fair jurisprudence.

And when there is no law to trust, there cannot be freedoms in the modern sense because they are dependent on who you are and where in time you are.

Let alone freedom of the press.

Two Sides of the Same Coin/2

(Due to common Internet problems in Turkey, I can only publish this article today. Apologies to my dear readers)

Closer to a way out or provocation?

For almost two weeks every columnist in every daily in Turkey wrote about the "Kurdish problem" following a declaration by President Gül. In that speech Gül claimed that there are opportunities for a resolution. According to the official state opinion, Kurdish fighters should give up arms and end the fight against soldiers for them to even start talks. A cease-fire is not sufficient for talks to start.

An unbiased observer might find this claim reasonable. A state cannot initiate talks officially with a party that is in war with it. It is conceived to be a minimum for negotiations to start.

But here lies another Turkish state policy. As it was implemented against all minorities for centuries since the Ottoman times. Once they get you down from your mountains, once they make you sit behind a table and start to talk, these talks never end and you cannot gain anything. Furthermore, they would not talk, or continuously deny all the deeds they've done against you. You would start to forget why you have gone up on the mountains in the first place.

Example #1: They claim they did nothing wrong against the Armenians, Pontic Greeks and Assyrians back in 1910's right. To initiate talks with Armenia on Genocide they ask for an independent panel of historians to decide if it was a Genocide. Here's the catch: this panel would be served with the Ottoman archives by the Turkish State and only with these.

Example #2: They claim the Turkish Army or the gendarmerie did nothing wrong against the Kurdish villages during last three decades. And the above mentioned negotiations would be on the terms that one side would be a terrorist organization which accepted that it is, and the other party would be a legitimate state that is defending the rights of its citizens against terrorists.

The people of Kurdistan are living in minefields at one end, and a hostile army on the other side for decades. White Renault 12's are coming in with dark suits inside them to pick people up on the streets, people who never comes back. Mass graves are found everywhere with bodies washed with acid.

Yes the Kurds are fighting with guerilla tactics which can easily be considered as terrorism. But what about their enemies? What are they?

Who by Fire

Fairies must have whispered to his ear. Or else, as he would prefer, God must have talked to him in his dreams. Turkish Prime minister declared he was sorry of ethnic cleansing of the "Christian minorities" in Asia Minor. We would never know if he was sincere since another minister from his cabinet recently declared that these actions were merely forming a nation and were necessary.

What a contradiction. Since his entrance into national political stage in the beginning of the millennium most minorities in Turkey supported his Ak Party (literally meaning "white" or "clean") with the hopes that his claims for real democracy and platform for religious independence would better their condition. However these hopes were short lived for his concept of democracy was only good for islamic fundamentalists. Government's oppression against Kurds and groups supporting laicism only increased in his premiership. Radical Islamists and extreme nationalists alike started shooting ministers, massacring Bible printers, threatening alcohol drinkers and tantalizing girls with "inappropriate" clothing.

He said "Many ethnicities were deported from our country for years. Did we win? We have to think about it. This really was a result of a fascist behavior. We have made the same mistake from time to time. But when you think in common sense, you say what great mistakes we have made." Almost one century of cleansing Asia Minor from Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians and many more minorities (in fact most of which were majorities in many areas before the Republic). Almost thirty years of disrupting every Kurdish family, village, uprooting hundreds of thousands, raging war against its own citizens. Now they say it was fascist!

In the democratic tradition, fascists pay for their crimes. I'd like to ask Mr. Prime Minister; who's going to pay for theirs?