21 Dec 2018 | Croatia, Hungary, Macedonia, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, Montenegro, News, Poland, Serbia
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”104453″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Additional reporting by Ada Borowicz, Ilcho Cvetanoski, Lazara Marinković and Zoltán Sipos
Unpatriotic behaviour. Sedition. Being in the pay of shadowy external forces. Faking a neo-Nazi event. These are just a few of the charges that have recently been levelled against independent journalists by pro-government media outlets in several central and eastern European countries.
The opening volley in a sustained campaign of vilification directed at Serbia‘s independent media was fired by the state-owned weekly Ilustrovana Politika at the end of October, with an article that accused journalists who are critical of the government of being “traitors and collaborators with the enemies of Serbia”.
Two weeks later, Ilustrovana Politika followed up with another piece that accused the veteran journalist Ljiljana Smajlović – who has long been critical of the nationalistic legacy bequeathed on the country by its former leader Slobodan Milosević and co-founded the Commission Investigating the Murders of Journalists in Serbia – of complicity in the 1999 NATO bombing of Belgrade.
In mid-December, Ilustrovana Politika’s campaign of character assassination against Smajlović ratcheted up another level with a garish front page depicting her as a Madonna figure with two naked infants bearing the features of Veran Matić, the chairman of the commission, and US Ambassador to Serbia Kyle Scott.
Smajlović has no doubt over what lies behind this tidal wave of denigration, of which she has become the prime target.
History repeating itself?
Editor Slavko Ćuruvija was murdered in 1999.
The long-running trial of four ex-members of the Serbian intelligence service accused of the murder of Dnevni Telegraf editor Slavko Ćuruvija – shot dead in April 1999 a few days after the pro-government Politika Ekspres accused him of welcoming the NATO bombardment – is now in its final stages, and Smajlović is convinced that the current campaign against her is designed to influence the judges in the case.
“The attacks come from the same Milosevic-era editors who also targeted my colleague Ćuruvija as a traitor prior to his assassination,” she told Mapping Media Freedom. “What is also sinister is that they are published and printed by the same state-owned media company that targeted Slavko nearly twenty years ago.”
“The clear implication is that I am the same kind of traitor as he was. How will that affect the judges? Will they fear this is not a good time to hold state security chiefs to account?” she added.
While Smajlović admits that Ilustrovana Politika’s denunciation has made her feel insecure, she insists she is less concerned for her own safety than worried about the consequences for the outcome of the Ćuruvija trial. Quoting Marx’s dictum that “History repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce”, Smajlović said. “I hope this is the farce part.”
Laying the blame
In Serbia and other central and eastern European countries, the assignment of responsibility for historic causes of resentment and the potential of these to further divide a polarised public often form the background to attacks on independent journalists by their state-approved colleagues.
The thorny topic of Poland’s relations with Germany during the last century recently gave pro-government media in Poland a chance to accuse independent media of being insufficiently patriotic and even of falsifying facts.
Journalist Bartosz Wieliński was targeted by the head of TVP Info’s news site.
In November, after Bartosz Wieliński, a journalist with the independent daily Gazeta Wyborcza, gave a critical account of a speech made by the Polish ambassador to Berlin at a conference devoted to the centenary of Poland’s independence, the head of the state broadcaster’s news website, TVP Info, accused him of lying and of putting the interests of Germany before those of his own country.
Only a few days before this attack, two media outlets that support Poland’s ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party accused the independent US-owned channel TVN of fabricating the evidence on which a report about the resurgence of neo-Nazism in Poland was based.
Since it came to power in 2015, PiS – which has been accused by its critics of tolerating organisations that espouse far-right ideologies – has put pressure on independent media outlets, many of which are foreign-owned, as part of its campaign to “re-polonise” the media, and now appears to be using the public broadcaster and other tame outlets as accessories in this drive.
Willing accomplices
In Hungary, where the government led by Viktor Orbán has succeeded in imposing tight control on all but a few determinedly independent media outlets, a number of loyal publications are available for the purposes of vilification.
2015 Freedom of Expression Journalism Award winner Tamás Bodoky, founder of Atlatszo.hu
In September, a whole raft of pro-government media outlets vied with each other to depict Tamás Bodoky, the editor-in-chief of the investigative journalism platform Átlátszó and winner of the 2015 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Journalism, as a “Soros hireling”. Bodoky became the target of a co-ordinated smear campaign after he posted on Facebook a picture of himself taken in Brussels with Dutch Green MEP Judith Sargentini, whose report on the Fidesz government’s infringement of core EU values had formed the basis for the European parliament’s censure motion against Hungary a few weeks earlier.
Another Hungarian journalist, András Dezső, who works for the independent news website Index.hu, also recently came under attack from pro-government media outlets after a Budapest court let him off with a reprimand over a case in which he was alleged to have made unauthorised use of personal information. In an article published before April’s general election, Dezső had cast doubt on the account of a woman who declared on Hungarian TV that she felt safer in Budapest than in Stockholm because of the lower level of immigration in Hungary. The airing of the interview by the public broadcaster was seen as providing support for Fidesz’s anti-immigration stance and aiding its election victory.
A criminal charge was issued against Dezső for “misuse of personal data”, and after he received what was described in the Hungarian media as “the mildest possible punishment”, two pro-government news websites, 888.hu and Origo.hu, accused him of deliberately propagating fake news and seeking to mislead his readers.
Why do they do it?
What motivates those journalists who smear their colleagues who seek to hold power to account?
There does not appear to be a simple answer to this question. While some may vilify fellow journalists to order purely for financial gain (or because of a desire for job security, government-sponsored media outlets generally being on a more secure financial footing than their independent counterparts), some appear to approach the task with at least a measure of conviction.
Ilcho Cvetanoski, who reports on Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Montenegro for Mapping Media Freedom and has observed many smear campaigns over the years, believes that financial and ideological motivating factors are often inextricably intertwined. He points out that two decades on from the armed conflicts in the region, Balkans societies are still deeply divided along ideological and ethnic lines, and many people still find it extremely difficult to accept the right of others to see things differently. Cvetanoski notes that there are many “true believers” who are genuinely convinced that they have a duty to defend their country from the “other” – a group in which they tend to lump critical journalists along with mercenaries, spies and traitors.
Lazara Marinković, who covers Serbia for Mapping Media Freedom, believes that the main motivation there is a need to be on the winning side and to please those in power. “Often they actually enjoy doing it, either for ideological reasons or because they feel more powerful when they are on the side of the ruling party,” she told Mapping Media Freedom. Marinković noted that the majority of Serbian tabloids and TV stations that conduct smear campaigns against independent journalists are owned by businessmen who have close links to President Aleksandar Vučić’s national conservative Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). Vučić began his political career during the Milosević era, when he served as Minister of Information.
In Poland, the divisions in society and the consequent lack of tolerance in political culture have been blamed for the increasing polarisation of the media. Michal Głowacki, a professor of media studies at Warsaw University, told Mapping Media Freedom that journalists take their cue from politicians in failing to show respect for fellow journalists associated with the “other side”. “They even use the same language as politicians,” Głowacki notes.
This is a view echoed by Hungarian journalist Anita Kőműves, a colleague of Bodoky’s at Átlátszó. Kőműves, however, insists that while journalists who work for independent media outlets strive to uphold the principles of journalistic ethics, the same cannot be said of those employed by pro-government outlets. “Some of those serving the government at propaganda outlets think that the two ‘sides’ of the Hungarian media are equally biased and that they are not acting any differently from their counterparts in the independent media sphere. However, this is not true: pro-government propaganda outlets do not adhere to even the basic rules of journalism,” she told Mapping Media Freedom.[/vc_column_text][vc_raw_html]JTNDaWZyYW1lJTIwd2lkdGglM0QlMjI3MDAlMjIlMjBoZWlnaHQlM0QlMjI0MDAlMjIlMjBzcmMlM0QlMjJodHRwcyUzQSUyRiUyRm1hcHBpbmdtZWRpYWZyZWVkb20udXNoYWhpZGkuaW8lMkZ2aWV3cyUyRm1hcCUyMiUyMGZyYW1lYm9yZGVyJTNEJTIyMCUyMiUyMGFsbG93ZnVsbHNjcmVlbiUzRSUzQyUyRmlmcmFtZSUzRQ==[/vc_raw_html][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1545385969139-cb42990e-b3e2-3″ taxonomies=”9044″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
18 Dec 2018 | Campaigns -- Featured, Statements
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Mohamed Lotfy (right) with his wife, the imprisoned activist Amal Fathy
A Cairo criminal court has ordered that Egyptian activist Amal Fathy, who was arrested on 11 May after posting a video criticising sexual harassment in Egypt, be released.
Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine, said: “No one should face arbitrary detention for freely expressing their opinions, in this case about how she felt about being sexually harassed. These charges have never made sense. While we welcome the order to release Amal, she must now actually be freed and all charges against her dropped.”
Fathy stood accused of “belonging to a terrorist group”, “using a website to promote ideas calling for terrorist acts”, and “intentionally disseminating false news that could harm public security and interest”.
During her appeal session on 25 November, Fathy told the judge: “I am afraid to go out to streets alone, every time I walk in the street alone someone harasses me. Last time, my son was going to be kidnapped from my arms by a motorcycle rider in Mohandiseen area. I am afraid to get out of my house, but I had to get out that day.”
Fathy took a taxi to the bank and was sexually assaulted by the driver. A crowd gathered, but let the man go. “I was in a shock and tried to understand what just has happened,” she told the judge.
A police officer showed up at the scene. “I looked at him, he was opening his trousers’ zipper and saying to me come here and I will make you feel comfortable. I experienced another shock and started to shout and scream,” Fathy said. “I felt powerless and subjugated and that’s what I said in the video. I never felt safe as a woman in my country, and this is not the first time that this happens to me.”
Fathy’s husband Mohamed Lotfy said of the ruling: “I am delighted to inform you that today a Cairo Criminal court has accepted Amal Fathy’s appeal against her preventive detention and ordered her release on probation (in case 621 of 2018 state security prosecution). She should be released within the next few days and check in a couple of times every week at a police station. On 26 December she will appear in front of another Cairo Criminal court to (most probably) extend her period of probation in the same case. On 30 December, the Maadi Appeals Misdemeanor court will issue its verdict in the other case (case 7991 of 2018 Maadi Misdemeanors). Maadi Misdemeanor court gave her a 2 years prison sentence and a fine and bail to suspend the sentence until the appeals court issues its verdict. The bail and fine were paid and we are now awaiting the final verdict by the appeals court on 30 December.”
Doughty Street Chambers — along with ECRF and Index on Censorship — have worked together on this case by lodging complaints with the United Nations Special Rapporteurs on freedom of expression and the protection of human rights defenders. Additionally, they had an ongoing appeal against Egypt with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which was being considered.[/vc_column_text][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1545208658227-39c5d90f-2d7b-3″ taxonomies=”25926″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
17 Dec 2018 | Magazine, News, Volume 47.04 Winter 2018
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Vital moments during our lifetimes are complicated by taboos about what we can and can’t talk about, and we end up making the wrong decisions just because we don’t get the full picture, says Rachael Jolley in the winter 2018 issue of Index on Censorship magazine” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][vc_column_text]
Birth, Marriage and Death, the winter 2018 issue of Index on Censorship magazine.
Birth, marriage and death–these are key staging posts. And that’s one reason why this issue looks at how taboos around these subjects have a critical impact on our world.
Sadly, there are still many of us who feel we can’t talk about problems openly at these times. Societal pressure to conform can be a powerful element in this and can help to create stultifying silences that frighten us into not being able to speak.
Being unable to discuss something that has a major and often complex impact on you or your family can lead to ignorance, fear and terrible decisions.
Not knowing about information or medical advice can also mean exposing people to illness and even death.
The Australian Museum sees death as the last taboo, but it also traces where those ideas have come from and how we are sometimes more shy to talk about subjects now than we were in the past.
The Sydney-based museum’s research considers how different cultures have disposed of the dead throughout history and where the concepts of cemeteries and burials have come from.
For instance, in Ancient Rome, only those of very high status were buried within the city walls, while the Ancient Greeks buried their dead within their homes.
The word “cemetery” derives from the Greek and Roman words for “sleeping chamber”, according to the Australian Museum, which suggests that although cremation was used by the Romans, it fell out of favour in western Europe for many centuries, partly because those of the Christian faith felt that setting fire to a body might interfere with chances of an afterlife.
Taboos about death continue to restrict speech (and actions) all around the world. In a six-part series on Chinese attitudes to death, the online magazine Sixth Tone revealed how, in China, people will pay extra not to have the number “4” in their mobile telephone number because the word sounds like the Mandarin word for “death”.
It also explores why Chinese families don’t talk about death and funerals, or even write wills.
In Britain, research by the charity Macmillan Cancer Support found just over a third of the people they surveyed had thoughts or feelings about death that they hadn’t shared with anyone. Fears about death concerned 84% of respondents, and one in seven people surveyed opted out of answering the questions about death.
These taboos, especially around death and illness, can stop people asking for help or finding support in times of crisis.
Mental health campaigner Alastair Campbell wrote in our winter 2015 issue that when he was growing up, no one ever spoke about cancer or admitted to having it.
It felt like it would bring shame to any family that admitted having it, he remembered. Campbell said that he felt times had moved on and that in Britain, where he lives, there was more openness about cancer these days, although people still struggle to talk about mental health.
Hospice director Elise Hoadley tells one of our writers, Tracey Bagshaw, for her article on the rise of death cafes (p14), that British people used to be better at talking about death because they saw it up close and personal. For instance, during the Victorian period it would be far more typical to have an open coffin in a home, where family or friends could visit the dead person before a funeral. And vicar Laura Baker says of 2018: “When someone dies we are all at sea. We don’t know what to do.”
In a powerful piece for this issue (p8), Moscow-based journalist Daria Litvinova reports on a campaigning movement in Russia to expose obstetric abuse, with hundreds of women’s stories being published. One obstacle to get these stories out is that Russian women are not expected to talk about the troubles they encounter during childbirth. As one interviewee tells Litvinova: “And generally, giving birth, just like anything else related to women’s physiology, is a taboo subject.” Russian maternity hospitals remain institutions where women often feel isolated, and some do not even allow relatives to visit. “We either talk about the beauty of a woman’s body or don’t talk about it at all,” said one Russian.
Elsewhere, Asian-American women talk to US editor Jan Fox (p27) about why they are afraid to speak to their parents and families about anything to do with sex; how they don’t admit to having partners; and how they worry that the climate of fear will get worse with new legislation being introduced in the USA.
As we go to press, not only are there moves to introduce a “gag rule” – which would mean removing funding from clinics that either discuss or offer abortion – but in the state of Ohio, lawmakers are discussing House Bill 565, which would make abortions illegal even if pregnancies arise from rape or incest or which risk the life of the mother. These new laws are likely to make women more worried than before about talking to professionals about abortion or contraception.
Don’t miss our special investigation from Honduras, where the bodies of young people are being discovered on a regular basis but their killers are not being convicted. Index’s 2018 journalism fellow Wendy Funes reports on p24.
We also look at the taboos around birth and marriage in other parts of the world. Wana Udobang reports from Nigeria (p45), where obstetrician Abosede Lewu tells her how the stigma around Caesarean births still exists in Nigeria, and how some women try to pretend they don’t happen — even if they have had the operation themselves. “In our environment, having a C-section is still seen as a form of weakness due to the combination of religion and culture.”
Meanwhile, there’s a fascinating piece from China about how its new two-child policy means women are being pressurised to have more children, even if they don’t want them — a great irony when, only a decade ago, if women had a second child they had to pay.
[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left” color=”custom” size=”xl” align=”right” custom_color=”#dd3333″][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”3/4″][vc_custom_heading text=”Taboos, especially around death and illness, can stop people asking for help or finding support in times of crisis” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]
In other matters, I have just returned from the annual Eurozine conference of cultural journals, this year held in Vienna. It was interesting to hear about a study into the role of this specific type of publication. Research carried out by Stefan Baack, Tamara Witschge and Tamilla Ziyatdinova at the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands, is looking at what long-form cultural journalism does and what it achieves.
The research is continuing, but the first part of the research has shown that this style of magazine or journal stimulates creative communities of artists and authors, as well as creating debates and exchanges across different fields of knowledge. Witschge, presenting the research to the assembled editors, said these publications (often published quarterly) have developed a special niche that exists between the news media and academic publishing, allowing them to cover issues in more depth than other media, with elements of reflection.
She added that in some countries cultural journals were also compensating for the “shortcomings and limitations of other media genres”. Ziyatdinova also spoke of the myth of the “short attention span”.
At a time when editors and analysts continue to debate the future of periodicals in various forms, this study was heartening. It suggests that there still is an audience for what they describe as “cultural journals” such as ours – magazines that are produced on a regular, but not daily basis which aim to analyse as well as report what is going on around the world. Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times newspaper, spoke of his vision of the media’s future at the James Cameron Memorial Lecture at London’s City University in November. As well as arguing that algorithms were not going to take over, he said he was convinced that print had a future. He said: “I still believe in the value and future of print: the smart, edited snapshot of the news, with intelligent analysis and authoritative commentary.”
His belief in magazines as an item that will continue to be in demand, if they offer something different from something readers have already consumed, was made clear: “Magazines, which also count as print – are they going to just disappear? No. Look at The Spectator, look at the sales of Private Eye.”
The vibrancy of the magazine world was also clear at this year’s British Society of Magazine Editors awards in London, with hundreds of titles represented. Jeremy Leslie, the owner of the wonderful Magculture shop in London (which stocks Index on Censorship) received a special award for his commitment to print. This innovative shop stocks only magazines, not books, and has carved out a niche for itself close to London’s City University. Well done to Jeremy. Index was also shortlisted for the specialist editor of the year award, so we are celebrating as well.
We hope you will continue to show your commitment to this particular magazine, in print or in our beautiful digital version, and think of buying gift subscriptions for your friends at this holiday time (check out https://shop.exacteditions.com/index-on-censorship for a digital subscription from anywhere in the world). We appreciate your support this year, and every year, and may you have a happy 2019.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Rachael Jolley is editor of Index on Censorship. She tweets @londoninsider. This article is part of the latest edition of Index on Censorship magazine, with its special report on Birth, Marriage and Death.
Index on Censorship’s winter 2018 issue is Birth, Marriage and Death, What are we afraid to talk about? We explore these taboos in the issue.
Look out for the new edition in bookshops, and don’t miss our Index on Censorship podcast, with special guests, on Soundcloud.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Birth, Marriage and Death” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2F2018%2F12%2Fbirth-marriage-death%2F|||”][vc_column_text]The winter 2018 issue of Index on Censorship magazine explores taboos surrounding birth, marriage and death. What are we afraid to talk about?
With: Liwaa Yazji, Karoline Kan, Jieun Baek[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_single_image image=”104225″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2018/12/birth-marriage-death/”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.
Subscription options from £18 or just £1.49 in the App Store for a digital issue.
Every subscriber helps support Index on Censorship’s projects around the world.
SUBSCRIBE NOW[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]
14 Dec 2018 | News, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”104347″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Deniz Altınay doses and tamps coffee in a way that shows he has done it many times before. Just three years ago, his daily routine used to be much different.
Back then, he would often stand in front of a dozen students in a classroom at the University of Mersin and lecture about media and communications. But that was before he and about 20 other academics were dismissed from the university for signing a petition calling for peace in protest against Turkish military operations in Kurdish provinces at the beginning of 2016.
Soon, the coffee machine starts to buzz and gurgle. He turns to students waiting on the other side of the counter and smiles. Along with two other dismissed academics and a friend, Altınay is one of the founders of Kültürhane, which literally means “House of Culture,” in the coastal city of Mersin. Kültürhane houses a library of 5,000 mostly donated books, a working space, as well as a café that doubles as an event venue.
Since Altınay and his partners were banned from teaching, the group of academics created a space where students could regularly drop in, learn and cram for exams. After all, even if they can’t give their high-achieving students an “A” anymore, they can at least serve them coffee and tea for their hard work. It’s a hierarchy that has been turned, if not upside-down, from vertical to horizontal in a country in which the relationship between academics and students is traditionally strict, epitomised by the word hocam, a mark of respect meaning “my teacher” or “my professor” used by every student, even when addressing them informally.
“To be honest, it was harder for our students and our friends to get used to it than for us,” Altınay says, laughing heartily. “Some of my students would say ‘Hocam, please don’t take the trouble of bringing us anything,’ and I would need to tell them ‘on the contrary, you should ask me to bring it because treating my students and friends is a great pleasure for me.’”
Kültürhane has allowed them to realise many things they wouldn’t have perceived at the university, he says. “The things we could change at the university were limited. Transforming the relationship with our students was important for us. We are no longer the university’s employees, and Kültürhane has provided us a very different kind of freedom. We can finally define the limits ourselves.”
Much like Turkey’s universities at present, the country’s streets are most certainly not spaces where people can engage in free speech. As public spaces become increasingly oppressive, the small niches of freedom like Kültürhane become even more valuable. “Here, we are making each other feel better. It’s like therapy.”
And a much needed one. When a platform called Academics for Peace issued a statement on 10 January 2016 calling for the end to Turkish military operations in a number of urban areas in southeastern Turkey, such as Cizre, Silvan, Nusaybin or Diyarbakır’s historic neighbourhood of Sur, they received overwhelming support from their colleagues. Some 1,128 academics signed the statement, while another thousand added their name to the list after the document went public. “We, as academics and researchers working on and/or in Turkey, declare that we will not be a party to this massacre by remaining silent,” the statement read. “We demand an immediate end to the violence perpetrated by the state.”
Those were strong words tearing decades of silence and hypocrisy apart. Intellectuals had kept mum when it came to the dirty military war against the Kurds, but with the nationwide Gezi protests still fresh in the memory, people were finally daring to speak up. The retribution, however, was harsh. Hundreds of academics who didn’t withdraw their signatures were first suspended and then dismissed by decree after the government acquired exceptional powers under the state of emergency that was declared in the wake of a coup attempt on 15 July 2016. Investigations were opened individually against each signatory on charges of “conducting propaganda for a terrorist organisation.”
Thirty-eight signatories of the Academics for Peace petition have been sentenced to 15 months each in prison so far, while two others have been sentenced to 18 months in jail. Some academics, such as political science professors Füsun Üstel and Büşra Ersanlı, rejected the possibility of a suspension of their sentence, meaning that they will spend time in prison when their verdict is upheld on appeal. More than 300 cases are continuing while prosecutors have also launched new trials, including cases against academics in Mersin and Adana. On the flip side, pro-government mafia boss Sedat Peker was recently acquitted in a case that was launched against him for threatening the petition’s signatories, saying he would “take a shower in [their] blood” — a ruling that clearly highlighted the concept of crime according to the Turkish judiciary doesn’t quite correspond to international human rights standards or pretty much to any conventional wisdom.
Solidarity classes against academic ban
Altınay says their ordeal is not just legal but also economic. Many academics had to leave the country to continue their career in universities in Europe or the United States. Others who stayed, either by choice or because they were slapped with a travel ban, struggle to find work and make ends meet.
But the ordeal is ultimately psychological. One of the signatories of the petition, Mehmet Fatih Traş, committed suicide months after being dismissed from the University of Çukurova, in the nearby city of Adana. A letter to a colleague revealed that Traş had experienced significant mobbing from other academics who accused him of being a “PKK sympathiser,” in reference to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party. As a result, the rector’s office cancelled three of Traş’s courses. In tribute and a reminder of the hardships some academics went through, Kültürhane’s library now bears his name.
“What we do shouldn’t be over-romanticised either,” Altınay says. “We are open seven days of the week, we work up to 10-12 hours a day. It’s physical work that also wears you out mentally, and we need to make a living out of it.”
Without a doubt, solidarity among academics has been one of the key elements that has kept them going. One of the first initiatives was founded in the city of Eskişehir in western Turkey a few months after the petition circulated. A group of academics who were suspended from their positions began organising “solidarity classes” off campus. More than 50 classes have been held since under the label of “Eskişehir School.” The initiative’s founders have now opened their own space – a café with a screening room and a workshop studio – called Uçurtma (Kite). Eskişehir, perhaps the only locality in Turkey that resembles a student city thanks to the quality of its university programs, was an ideal place for the burgeoning solidarity to bear fruit.
“We were one of the first groups which became the object of an investigation. We organised the first solidarity class in May 2016. We hadn’t been dismissed yet at the time,” said Pelin Yalçınoğlu, a former lecturer at the faculty of education of Anadolu University. “We wanted to draw attention to what universities were and show that it was not possible to lock knowledge inside a campus. If they were not going to give us space for questioning, we thought we might do it elsewhere.”
Since May 2016, people have gathered every two weeks to learn and discuss a different subject. The day of our interview, Eskişehir School was holding a class on theatre with Tülin Sağlam, a prominent expert on the art of theatre in the country. Just like the organisers, Sağlam was dismissed from her position at the prestigious language, history and geography department of the University of Ankara for signing the petition.
“There were animated debates among us when we decided to choose the name Eskişehir School for our initiative. While we were wondering how we could fulfill [the underlying ambitions], everybody loved the name.” But as time passed, the initiative needed a space to take root. Economic needs were pressing too. If the meagre financial support collected for the school was used in helping out an academic who was dismissed with one of the first emergency decrees, it wasn’t enough for the founders who soon met the same fate. And so was born Uçurtma.
“This is a space to allow Eskişehir School to continue existing,” Yalçınoğlu said. While some of her colleagues started making a transition and others kept working in jobs related to their own field, Yalçınoğlu wanted to invest herself in an activity that could feed Eskişehir School. “What we all want is actually to make Eskişehir School worthy of its name. If you call it ‘school,’ it should have a say and a perspective on the production of knowledge in this country. We would like it to do its own research, publish its own articles, organise seminars and conferences; [we just want it] to go beyond the classes.” Their new endeavour started with a two-day symposium on law and dystopia in November.
Dismissals as censorship
Both Kültürhane and Eskişehir School show that some of the dismissed academics are choosing the road less travelled and keeping up the fight by creating their own spaces for knowledge, even if it means an uncertain future for their careers. In both efforts, the common concern is that the government is now dictating what should be taught at Turkish universities, and what should not.
“There is an intense propaganda activity going on,” Altınay said. “Dismissals are part of this propaganda and also a very serious censorship mechanism. By doing so, they are erecting a very clear obstacle for the expression of certain thoughts. These are not ideological thoughts at all, but scientific truths. And they are raising a generation who won’t know anything about these scientific truths. I don’t know a bigger censorship than that.”
Kültürhane, which turned one this year, became such a breathing space for many people that the founders even became an object of mirth. “They are teasing us, ‘how fortunate that you were dismissed,’” Altınay said. In a year, they have organised around 150 events, discussions or workshops on all types of subjects and topics.
Kültürhane’s co-founder, Ulaş Bayraktar, also feels inspired by the public’s response. “We didn’t plan anything or even know what we were doing. We just had a feeling. I personally never attached a lot of meaning to being an academic or a public servant. Our means have changed, but it’s the same journey. The difference is that we don’t have an official title anymore.” For the future, he hopes to see all the initiatives cooperating together. “If we can develop such a model, I think these initiatives can leave a mark. But I am hopeful. All these efforts give us the hint of the power of being together.”
Yalçınoğlu, Altınay and Bayraktar don’t expect the current situation for dismissed academics to change in the near future. In the face of ever-worsening political pressure and a severe economic crisis, they are determined to conserve their small-scale haven of knowledge. These initiatives should perhaps also be considered as their modest response to their dismissals.[/vc_column_text][vc_images_carousel images=”104349,104348,104346,104343,104342,104341,104345″ img_size=”full” autoplay=”yes”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
