PEN International: Today Turkey is the largest jailer of journalists in the world.
Dear All,
I have been sending you informative mails about the freedom of expression violations and anti-democratic practices from time to time (especially about some victims as international awarded writer Ms Asli Erdogan, linguistic Ms. Necmiye Alpay, feminist sociogilist Ms Pinar Selek, prof of law and writer Ms Istar Gozaydin, oldest book supplement’s editor Mr Turan Gunay, journalist Mr Ahmet Sik, and many others.)
PEN International president Ms. Jenifer Clements organized a dissent meeting about these issues in Istanbul with the participation of many PEN members from all around the world some time ago. And she published an article (below) on PEN page to attract attention about this subject. PEN is a very prestigious organization by itself, but its effect is more important than its declerations and/or comments. Because PEN is an organization having local head offices in 141 countries. It reaches to 141 countries with one decleration. PEN members are not only literary writers; there are many journalist members, too, which is an opportunity for a subject to be heard by the public of 141 countries through press. Likewise, some of the member writers of PEN are lawyers, academicians, activists, etc.
Today, opponent journalists are in prison at 151 different spots in Turkey. We hear news about new custodies or arrests every day. Thousands of journalists, academicians, lawyers and others have been fired; work certificates of some of them have been taken from them. To avoid international reactions, Turkey’s Minister of Justice and government’s spokesmen have been declaring that the journalists are not in prison due to doing their jobs. Yes, journalists are humans who can commit crime, however, today only 1 % of the imprisoned journalists are in prison due to ordinary crimes. Arrests originate from opposing to government policies. And the most important factor is that almost all these cases, custodies and arrests are unlawfull in accordance with Turkish legal system.
After the unsuccessful coup attempt which was an unacceptable try of domination, government declared a state of emergency. And, instead of punishing only the ones who had been responsible for this coup attempt, government saw this as an opportunity to silance all the opponents. Using the right of passing statutory decrees vested to the president, many newspapers, tv’s, radios and organizations of human rights, women and children have been closed. People have been arrested, fired. A witch hunt has been started as if saying hello to Arthur Miller’s A Witch's Cauldron.
Constitution referendum which fully occupies Turkey’s agenda today is not a real referandum for Constitution. Because the text is not a Constitution text which should be a social agreement text which is about one President who owns all the authority of a Prime Minister and President who have a difference of power in one sense between them and about minimum control of the President’s executional rights, almost like a dictator’s. In the text, there is not a single article about the rights of the people who constitute the general public of the country, or how they will live together or preventing the usage of the taxes collected compulsorily by the governent, called as “cold monster” by Nietzeche, against our wills and even for crimes against humanity, war crimes, etc. Please do not see this as only Turkey’s problem.
If you fall into this error, it will be too late for you to hear the foot steps of anti democracy threatening whole world. As the strengthen rightest politics gain more power, it will be advanced to authoritarianism, then to totalitarianism in the whole world. Look at USA; look what happenned within a short period of time. There is an outright attack on the health, rights, and future of the world’s most vulnerable women. A pressure of ignoring against immigrants. Even, ban of visa for islamic country citizens. Thanks God that justice system in the USA is an established andin some senses, an independent body and this ban has been cancelled. On the other hand in Turkey, judges and prosecutors who are not tied to the government have been fired; some of them has been imprisoned. Today, justice works according to politics not to law. Laws are on paper; they are cogs in the machine in enforcement.
Please raise your voice without stopping in all over the world, without doing anything violent; even with artistic methods as Stephen Heissel offered in his “Indignez-vous!”, against this anti democratic conduct and eliminating freedom of expression, so that these anti democratic steps are taken back and are not spreaded anywhere in the world.
Warm regards,
ps. I have just received the below 2 happy notes from Alexander Skipis who is the president of Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (The German Publishers and Booksellers Association) and who has been constantly campaigning and taking actions against eliminating freedom of speech in Turkey.
"Tomorrow, we will deliver the petition #FreeWordsTurkey, which we co-initiated with PEN and RSF. We will deliver the more than 111.000 signatures to the press secretary of Chancellor Merkel in Berlin and hope to thereby send a strong sign of solidarity with our Turkish friends and colleagues to the world. My colleague Alex Viess will send you some links with a photograph and social media posts tomorrow. We would very much appreciate it if you shared it with your network. We hope that the people in Turkey will feel a little bit less alone when they see it."
“FreeWordsTurkey petition with 111,047 signatures presented to Germany’s federal government
after having received a staggering 111,000 signatures, we have delivered the petition #FreeWordsTurkey to the Federal Government of Germany at the Federal Chancellery. Government spokesman Steffen Seibert was present, as was Christoph Heusgen, foreign and security policy adviser of chancellor Merkel. You can follow the event live on Facebook, where change.org will provide a live video which we will share on our site www.facebook.com/boersenverein.”
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Mehmet Atak
+ 90 212 225 54 41
+ 90 212 343 50 04
World writers to Turkey’s imprisoned writers: You are not alone
Our friends and colleagues in Turkey,
In recent months we have witnessed a dramatic crackdown on free expression in your country. We have watched the authorities imprison PEN members, writers, journalists, civil servants, teachers, and thousands of others. Many of these were not arrests related to the coup attempt, but of peaceful voices critical of the government. In the wake of the breakdown of the peace negotiations, Turkey’s Kurdish population has borne the brunt of wide-scale attacks on civilians and restrictions on the use of their language in the media.
Some 150 writers and journalists are languishing behind bars. Over 170 news outlets have been shut down under laws passed by presidential decree following the imposition of a state of emergency, a period that has been characterised by the heavy-handed use of extraordinary powers while normal constitutional protections are suspended.
Today Turkey is the largest jailer of journalists in the world.
We will not stand by silently. We offered resistance and trenchant criticism when Aslı Erdoğan and Necmiye Alpay were imprisoned. They are happily now free, although they endured several months behind bars and unsubstantiated criminal proceedings against them are ongoing. Appallingly, on the day of their release, award-winning investigative journalist and English PEN’s former writer-in-residence Ahmet Şık was arrested at his home in Istanbul. He remains in prison today.
Ahmet Şık joins a long list of writers in prison in Turkey: these include Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu, editor of its books supplement Turhan Günay, and columnist and International Press Institute (IPI) board member Kadri Gürsel, all held since 31 October. Novelist Ahmet Altan has been held on alleged terror charges since 23 September 2016. More recently, three journalists, Mahir Kanaat from BirGün daily, Ömer Çelik and Tunca Öğreten, managing editors of DİHA news agency and online news portal Diken respectively, were arrested on 18 January 2017 with charges of membership to three different terrorist organisations after their initial detention on 25 November 2016.
We are writing to you to let you know that you are not alone. We are writing to tell you that we will not stand idly by in your time of need. We will not be silent while your human rights are violated. We will raise our global voice against any effort to silence yours.
PEN stands for the principle of unhampered transmission of thought within each nation and between all nations, and members and supporters pledge themselves to oppose any form of suppression of freedom of expression in the country and community to which they belong, as well as throughout the world. A climate of free expression where the free exchange of ideas is facilitated fosters mutual understanding, transparency and accountability and ultimately enhances national security. Turkey must uphold its obligations to protect free expression and other human rights and the writers of Turkey must be able to speak, to criticise, to protest, without fear of reprisals. Our word, our pens, our voices in your support is our continued pledge to you.
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21.02.2017, 20:30, "Aurelia Dondo" <aurelia.dondo@pen-international.org>:
Dear friends,
PEN International would like to thank you for taking part in our roundtable event on freedom of expression and for the quality of our discussions.
We take this opportunity to share our solidarity statement with imprisoned writers and journalists, signed by numerous Nobel laureates, writers, poets, artists and investigative journalists: http://www.pen-international.org/newsitems/message-of-solidarity-2017/ .
Please be assured that PEN will continue to campaign in partnership with other human rights groups for the freedom of those imprisoned solely for exercising their right to free expression and to protest any sweeping powers that allow the silencing of critical voices.
Yours sincerely,
Carles Torner
Executive Director
PEN International
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