I have known Erol Önderoğlu for ages. This gentle soul has been monitoring the ever-volatile state of Turkish journalism more regularly than anybody else. His memory, as the national representative of the Reporters Without Borders, has been a prime source of reference for what we ought to know about the state of media freedom and independence.
On 20 June, perhaps not so surprisingly, we all witnessed Erol being sent to pre-trial detention, taken out of the courtroom in Istanbul in handcuffs.
Charge? “Terrorist propaganda.” Why? Erol was subjected to a legal investigation together with two prominent intellectuals, author Ahmet Nesin, and Prof Şebnem Korur Fincanci – who is the chairwoman of the Turkish Human Rights Foundation – because they had joined a so-called solidarity vigil, as an “editor for a day”, at the pro-Kurdish Özgür Gündem daily, which has has been under immense pressure lately.
This vigil had assembled, since 3 May, more than 40 intellectuals, 37 of whom have now been probed for the same charges. One can now only imagine the magnitude of a crackdown underway if the courts copy-paste detention decisions to all of them, which is not that unlikely.
Journalism has, without the slightest doubt, become the most risky and endangered profession in Turkey. Journalism is essential to any democracy. It’s demise will mean the end of democracy.
Turkey is now a country — paradoxically a negotiating partner with the EU on membership — where journalism is criminalised, where its exercise equates to taking a walk on a legal, political and social minefield.
“May God bless the hands of all those who beat these so-called journalists” tweeted Sait Turgut, a top local figure of AKP in Midyat, where a bomb attack on 8 June by the PKK had claimed 5 lives and left more than 50 people wounded.
Most recently, Can Erzincan TV, a liberal-independent channel with tiny financial resources but a strong critical content, was told by the board of TurkSat that it will be dropped from the service due to “terrorist propaganda”. Why? Because some of the commentators, who are allowed to express their opinions, are perceived as affiliated with the Gülen Movement, which has been declared a terrorist organisation by president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
It is commonplace for AKP officials from top down demonise journalists this way. Harrassment, censorship, criminal charges and arrests are now routine.
Detention of the three top human rights figures, the event in Midyat or the case of Can Erzincan TV are only snapshots of an ongoing oppression mainly aimed at exterminating the fourth estate as we know it. According to Mapping Media Freedom, there have been over 60 verified violations of press freedom since 1 January 2016.
The lethal cycle to our profession approaches its completion.
While journalists in Turkey – be they Turkish, Kurdish or foreign – feel less and less secure, the absence of truthful, accurate, critical reporting has become a norm. Covering stories such as the ”Panama Papers” leak — which includes hundreds of Turkish business people, many of whom have ties with the AKP government — or the emerging corruption case of Reza Zarrab — an Iranian businessman who was closely connected with the top echelons of the AKP — seems unthinkable due to dense self-censorship.
Demonisation of the Kurdish Political Movement and the restrictions in the south eastern region has made it an extreme challenge to report objectively on the tragic events unfolding in the mainly Kurdish provinces which have forced, according to Amnesty International, around 500,000 to leave their homes.
Journalism in Turkey now means being compromised in the newsrooms, facing jail sentences for reportage or commentary, living under constant threat of being fired, operating under threats and harassment. A noble profession has turned into a curse.
In the case of Turkey, fewer and fewer people are left with any doubt about the concentration of power. It’s in the hands of a single person who claims supremacy before all state institutions. The state of its media is now one without any editorial independence and diversity of thought.
President Erdoğan, copying like-minded leaders such as Fujimori, Chavez, Maduro, Aliyev and, especially, Putin, did actually much better than those.
His dismay with critical journalism surfaced fully from 2010 on, when he was left unchecked at the top of his party, alienating other founding fathers like Abdullah Gül, Ali Babacan and others who did not have an issue with a diverse press.
Soon it turned into contempt, hatred, grudge and revenge.
He obviously thought that a series of election victories gave him legitimacy to launch a full-scale power grab that necessitated capturing control of the large-scale media outlets.
His multi-layered media strategy began with Gezi Park protests in 2013 and fully exposed his autocratic intentions.
While his loyal media groups helped polarise the society, Erdoğan stiffly micro-managed the media moguls with a non-AKP background — whose existence depended on lucrative public contracts — to exert constant self-censorship in their news outlets, which due to their greed they willingly did.
This pattern proved to be successful. Newsrooms abandoned all critical content. What’s more, sackings and removals of dignified journalists peaked en masse, amounting now to approximately 4,000.
By the end of 2014, Erdoğan had conquered the bulk of the critical media.
Since 2015 there has been more drama. The attacks against the remaining part of the critical media escalated in three ways: intimidation, seizure and pressure of pro-Kurdish outlets.
Doğan group, the largest in the sector, was intimidated by pro-AKP vandalism last summer and brought to its knees by legal processes on alleged “organized crime” charges involving its boss.
As a result the journalism sector has had its teeth pulled out.
Meanwhile, police raided and seized the critical and influential Koza-Ipek and Zaman media groups, within the last 8 months, terminating some of its outlets, turning some others pro-government overnight and, after appointing trustees, firing more than 1,500 journalists.
Kurdish media, at the same time, became a prime target as the conflict grew and more and more Kurdish journalists found themselves in jail.
With up to 90% of a genetically modified media directly or indirectly under the control Erdoğan and in service of his drive for more power, decent journalism is left to a couple of minor TV channels and a handful newspapers with extremely low circulations.
With 32 journalists in prison and its fall in international press freedom indexes continuing to new all-time lows, Turkey’s public has been stripped of its right to know and cut off from its right to debate.
Journalism gagged means not only an end to the country’s democratic transition, but also all bridges of communication with its allies collapsing into darkness.
Belarus Free Theatre have been using their creative and subversive art to protest the dictatorial rule of Aleksandr Lukashenko for over a decade.
Facing pressure from authorities since their inception, the theatre company nonetheless thrived underground, performing in apartments, basements and forests despite continued arrests and brutal interrogations. In 2011, while on tour, they were told they were unable to return home. Refusing to be silenced, the group set up headquarters in London and continued to direct projects in Belarus. In 2016 the group was shortlisted for Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Arts Award.
Why is it important to mount Burning Doors at this time?
Koliada: Freedom of expression in that geopolitical knot where we come from and where more than 200 million people live under severe pressures of authoritarian and dictatorial regimes. If we do not talk and alert people living in western, democratic countries to our stories, their countries will be infiltrated in different forms, initially unnoticeably, by people manipulating the authorities who say it’s all in the name of the law.
Where did the idea come from?
Koliada: The idea behind Burning Doors is at the heart of Belarus Free Theatre. Close your eyes, just for a moment, and imagine that a theatre company based here in the UK could be prohibited to perform shows by Mark Ravenhill and Sarah Kane, and needs to perform underground. Even operating underground, the actors and managers could be arrested by MI5, riot police or the Met, and audience members threatened and told that they could lose their jobs and education.
(Our audience is a very young one and, of course, they are not scared of the secret services, so what would happen in those cases is that their parents would be threatened with professional retribution.)
I’ll continue and ask you to imagine that all of it has happened and continues to happen to a UK based-theatre company, one that is known and performs across the world, and yet can only exist because its founding members are exiled from their homeland and they now have political asylum in the UK. This has been our story for the past 11 years.
It’s in our blood to feel all the symptoms of dictatorship. Last year when we mounted Staging A Revolution: I’m with Banned which brought international attention to banned artists in Belarus, Ukraine (Ukrainian artists who spoke out against the Russian military invasion of Ukraine and are now prohibited in Russia), and Russia, it was the first time anyone had mounted an artistic solidarity event with Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Around the same time that the Festival took place, filmmaker Oleg Sentsov and contemporary artist Petr Pavlensky were arrested. Masha Alekhina, a member of Pussy Riot who served two years in jail, got in contact with us and suggested we work together. We knew we had to do it. We were intrigued by the artistic possibilities of working with a real witness talking about her own personal experiences and bringing her into our Minsk-based ensemble of actors, the most talented and bravest in the world. We wanted to connect Masha’s story to those of other persecuted contemporary actors and through a prism of their personal stories to speak openly about the hypocrisy of politicians and to inspire our audiences to reflect on the reality that we as human beings need to stand up together against repressive regimes. It’s important for us to reemphasise that we are not heroes, we are not victims, we are contemporary artists.
Does BFT think that building cross-border alliances with artists will have an impact on the threats to freedom of expression?
Koliada: Any cross-borders alliances of artists expands audiences. It transforms all of us into a movement. Why do dictators put contemporary artists into jails? Because they want to show with a single example that it’s dangerous to resist systems through the arts. They become scared when we stand up together against them. It’s very simple in thought and action but this is what makes them go into panic mode. Ai Wei Wei was under a house arrest when he created the visual icon for our campaign, Staging A Revolution: I’m with Banned. More than 600,000 people across the world saw it online, and people from more than 37 countries supported our campaign. This kind of collective action makes dictators feel sick and it’s then that they start to make the mistakes that lead to their collapse.
It’s unprecedented for us as a theatre company making work for more than eleven years under dictatorship to collaborate with a woman who served a two-year term in a Russian jail. Within days of announcing this collaboration to the media in the UK, it spread across the world. Even this level of coverage is terrifying to people like Putin or Lukashenko because it demonstrates the tidal wave of support for non-violent resistance by creating art. Art is more powerful than political rhetoric. When Mick Jagger, Tom Stoppard and Vaclav Havel made a video supporting the people of Belarus, we were arrested by the KGB. They knew that it was instigated and created by members of BFT. We understood then that the support of artists across the world was more terrifying to them than statements from politicians.
I think it’s time for all of us to make steps forward and to start to act together with artists, human rights defenders, politicians and journalists, because dictators are scared of a strong mutual position.
How has BFT’s mission evolved since being founded a decade ago?
Koliada: From the very beginning we were only interested in people. Human life is the most interesting subject matter for us. We started with our own personal taboos, then society’s taboos, then moved onto a global dimension. The only thing that is unchanging is our fundamental interest in people. When we perform in different continents across the world, people tell us that they find our work so powerful because they always find themselves within us. And likewise, we find ourselves in our audiences.
How else can people support BFT and Burning Doors?
Koliada: Information is the key. If people know what we do, why and how, we have the chance to continue to exist. People knowing of our existence and our work helps on many different levels including our financial sustainability. Last week, President Obama extended sanctions in Belarus stating that Belarus is “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security of the United States of America and its foreign affairs”. Yet at the same time, the EU is playing a badly orchestrated geopolitical rebranding game to try to convince people that “Belarus is normal”. It’s not. It has been a dictatorship in Europe for 22 years, political opponents have been murdered and their bodies never found. Those who perpetrated those crimes are still in power. Even this week, there is a trial underway against Eduard Palchis, who is a blogger and journalist. It seems that Belarus might have seized another political prisoner if human rights organisations across the world do not intervene.
And for BFT more specifically, this month we launched our first-ever Kickstarter campaign. We need to raise £20,000 in the month of June to bring our tireless, extraordinarily brave troupe of actors to the UK to work with them on our new work, Burning Doors. Every pound will help us get there. Please consider finding out more and supporting us today.
Free Word in partnership with Index on Censorship brought together three major cultural figures from Hungary, Poland and Turkey to compare their stories and ask: is Europe just a place, or a set of values that are rapidly unravelling?
Europe was a bastion of hope for more than a million refugees last year. What brought them? A hunger for safety and security? Dreams of freedom? The draw of liberal democracy with its ideals of free expression, equal opportunity and persecution for none?
But look within our own continent and you will see the cracks. In Hungary, Victor Orban’s administration looks increasingly autocratic. Poland’s new conservative government is making changes to its public media that critics have said amount to a takeover. How can we support neighbours like Turkey in their fight to avoid authoritarianism if we can’t fly the banner for freedom at home?
Agnes Heller, Elif Shafak and Adam Zagajewski Photos: Sean Gallagher/Index on Censorship
Poland, Hungary and Turkey come up on Index’s radar far too often at the moment, says @DBetzH, introducing tonight’s panelists #fweurope
— Index on Censorship (@IndexCensorship) June 15, 2016
In Turkey people cite Singapore as example of having economic success without democracy. Says @Elif_Safak#fweurope
— Index on Censorship (@IndexCensorship) June 15, 2016
‘Liberal democracy is majority decision but not majority rule.’ #AgnesHeller#FWEurope
Agnes Heller was born in 1929 and is one of the leading thinkers to come out of the tradition of critical theory. Her broad intellectual range and publications include ethics, philosophical anthropology, political philosophy and a theory of modernity and its culture. Hungarian by birth, she was one of the best-known dissident Marxists in central Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. She has held visiting lectureships all over the world and has been the Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy at the New School in New York. She now lives in Budapest and is one of the most popular and outspoken critics of the current regime.
Elif Shafak was born in Strasbourg, France, in 1971. She is an award-winning novelist and the most widely read woman writer in Turkey. Critics have named her as “one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Turkish and world literature”. Her books have been published in more than 40 countries and she was awarded the honorary distinction of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. Elif has published thirteen books, nine of which are novels. She writes fiction in both Turkish and English. Elif blends Western and Eastern traditions of storytelling, bringing out the myriad stories of women, minorities, immigrants, subcultures, youth and global souls. Her work draws on diverse cultures and literary traditions, as well as a deep interest in history, philosophy, Sufism, oral culture, and cultural politics. Elif’s writing breaks down categories, clichés, and cultural ghettoes. She also has a keen eye for black humour.
Adam Zagajewski is an award-winning poet, novelist, translator and essayist. Born in Lwow in 1945, he first became well-known as one of the leading poets of the Generation of ‘68’ or the Polish New Wave (Nowa Fala). His poems and essays have been translated into many languages. Among his honors and awards are a fellowship from the Berliner Kunstlerprogramm, the Kurt Tucholsky Prize, a Prix de la Liberté, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Since 1988, he has served as visiting associate professor of English in the Creative Writing Programme at the University of Houston. In 2010, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Adam is currently co-editor of Zeszyty Literackie (Literary Review). He lives in Krakow.
Art has traditionally accompanied political and social movements in Latin America and the turn of the 21st century has seen a resurgence of diverse forms of expression, including hip hop.
“Hip hop has many faces — from the underground scenes to gangster rap — and it allows you to talk about many different things,” says Colombian rapper Luisa Ospina, aka Shhorai. “Many artists may talk about ‘bitches’, drugs and violence, and that’s fine for them, but it’s not for me, especially given the history of violence and conflict in my country.”
Shhorai, an independent hip-hop artist, educator and activist from Colombia’s second-largest city, Medellín, began rapping in 2003 at the age of 13.
“I started recording music at my home studio at 15, influenced by my older brother who is also a rapper,” Shhorai says. She released her debut album Verdades Hostiles in 2011, followed by Doble X: Inicio y Complemento in 2015. She has worked in collaboration with various Colombian artists, including Nkanto MC and Koriotto.
Taking inspiration from female MCs throughout the Americas – from Columbian duo Diana Avella and Lucía Vargas and Venezuala’s Gabylonia to Queen Latifah, famed for fighting misogyny in US hip hop – Shhorai uses her music to explore the structures of gender and class which create disadvantages for so many Colombians. Despite the progress her country has made in the last few decades, many problems remain unresolved. “Women in particular in my country have poor access to decent jobs and education and too many sisters have been affected by violence,” Shhorai said.
“For indigenous women and women who work on the land, it is even worse: they work so hard but are still silent. Can you imagine a society in which so many women have no voice?”
“I was born in a culture which is all the time asking women: ‘Why don’t you wear makeup?’ ‘Why are you so big?’ ‘Why do you eat this?’,” she says. “So I rap a lot about empowering women and becoming more independent because often we don’t trust ourselves or know the inner power we have.”
For every 10 men in hip hop, there is only one woman, explains Shhorai. “So we are naturally at a disadvantage and often feel alone, so we have to work together,” she says. “And while I love feminism, I don’t like hate for men because I recognise that we are together and must fight together.”
Many women — as with many men — in hip hop, come from poor communities, not just in Medellín, but in Colombia’s capital Bogota and other cities like Cali.
There are many sides to Medellín. Foreigners may know it for its troubled history — Pablo Escobar, cocaine and the violence that accompanied them. Other visitors may be more aware of its current status as one of the foremost and growing art and cultural hubs on the planet. The city came out on top of Tel Aviv and New York and was named the world’s most innovative city in 2013.
“Medellín has become a much better city than it was 20 years ago — with many restaurants, a metro system, concerts all the time — but many still don’t see how hard it still is for many people who live here – those who don’t have the resources to go to university, or for the young people who have to fight against a system just to own something,” Shhorai explains. “The city has two very different faces.”
Poor communities and minorities like indigenous people “don’t have options” and often don’t have a say. “I want the world to pay more attention to the poverty because the rich downtown doesn’t need more publicity — it has enough,” Shhorai says.
This is what the rapper aims for in much of her work — whether in music, education or activism — when she talks about the political background and social conditions in her neighbourhood. “In this way, hip hop is for me a kind of liberty and at the same time an expression of love for my community.”
One of the big problems in Colombian society is how in many ways it has turned a blind eye to the problems faced by women and the poor alike. A byproduct of this, inevitably, is marginalised people turning to hip hop and hip-hop culture — from breakdancing, DJing, MCing and graffiti — as places where they can finally be heard.
“Hip hop was born in poor communities in the USA often by those living terrible conditions and I can see they discovered a way of getting together and doing something as a community,” says Shhorai. “This idea filtered back to us in Latin America and we got into hip hop for many of those same reasons, which is why rap music is everywhere in Medellín.”
“But above all, hip hop is an opportunity to be independent, and while it’s difficult, it is possible to create real change through art.”
Art has traditionally accompanied political and social movements in Latin America and the turn of the 21st century has seen a resurgence of diverse forms of expression, including hip hop.