We have gathered in this room to talk about press freedom in

We have gathered in this room to talk about press freedom in Turkey.
There are 68 journalists in jail in Turkey. And there are hundreds more who fear arrest and
imprisonment. Censorship and self-censorship are carried out publicly. Critical journalists are
being fired from newspapers and televisions. Without a doubt, for a country like this, press
freedom is an issue worth discussing.
But let me say this.
If there is freedom in a country, it means it exists for journalists as well. Press freedom in a
country is directly proportional to its values such as justice, democracy and rule of law.
In Turkey, we are going through a period where we are losing these values for all citizens.
It doesn‟t matter if you are a journalist, a member of an opposition party, a dissident scholar
or a soldier who is just doing his job. In Turkey, your house can be raided any given morning,
and you can be arrested without any convincing evidence. You can be charged with
establishing a terrorist organization with people you don‟t even know. This is what happened
to me.
Now I can go into specific details about the condition of the Turkish press.
The biggest power we journalists have is the ability to influence public opinion with the
articles we write and stories we publish. We can help create a clean society by revealing
corruption, and help achieve justice by revealing the lack of law.
It is exactly for this reason why journalists don‟t always have good relationships with those
who hold power. Just as a murderer sees the witnesses as its enemy, a corrupt leadership sees
journalists as its enemy. They don‟t want them to write the truth. They want a type of
journalism favorable to their interests which doesn‟t investigate, question or criticize.
This is exactly what is happening in Turkey today.
There are two big threats to democracy, rule of law and therefore to press freedom in the
country. The first is Prime Minister Erdogan‟s repressive policies. The second is the followers
of FethullahGulen, a religious leader who currently resides in the United States, who are
illegally organizing in the Turkish police force and the judicial system.
For these threats to be better understood, I want to give some examples of Prime Minister
Erdogan‟s public speeches.
On September 19th 2008, Erdogan called for a boycott on Dogan Media Group‟s publications,
who wrote about the biggest corruption scandal in Turkey‟s recent history involving his
party‟s members. His exact words, and I quote: “As supporters of my party, take part in a
campaign against this media who publishes lies. Do not let these newspapers in your homes.”
Prime Minister regularly reiterated his call for boycott.
On December 20th, 2008, Aksam newspaper published a news article about the air pollution
caused by the coal distributed by Prime Minister‟s party to receive more votes in elections.
Following the article, Erdogan called out the owner of the newspaper publicly and said, and I
quote: “Shame on you! You either have to shut down your newspaper or stop publishing lies.”
Also, on February 26th 2010, he warned the media bosses against employing columnists who
criticize him.
He said: “Now I call on the bosses of these newspapers. You can‟t say „it‟s the columnist, it‟s
not under my control‟. You pay the salaries of those who write columns on your newspaper.
Then you have no right to complain and cry later. The ones who let these people write on their
newspapers should say „Sorry brother, there is no place for you in our shop‟, because
everyone puts what they deserve on their window shop.”
When I was coming here, Turkey was discussing yet another one of Prime Minister Erdogan‟s
operations on the media. This time Erdogan took a stance against the newspaper who
published the minutes of the meeting the government officials had with the leader of the PKK
Abdullah Ocalan. He said: “You can not use that heading, you shouldn‟t have. And they will
tell you that this is journalism. If this is journalism, screw journalism”
As you can very clearly see, Erdogan with no hesitation, threatens journalists and media
bosses who employ them. Behind the scenes, the advisors of the Prime Minister call on
newspaper directors, giving them the names of critical journalists, asking for their dismissals.
And what happens to the media bosses who ignore Prime Minister‟s threats?
For example, I can remind you of the 2.5 billion dollar tax fine on Turkey‟s largest media
group, Dogan. We can look at the media bosses who lost their newspapers and television
channels due to financial operations. Or I can point to you that four people arrested as part of
the Ergenekon case were owners of television channels.
Prime Minister‟s relationship with media bosses are so that, when ErdoganDemiroren bought
Milliyet and Vatan newspapers, he picked the CEO‟s of the newspaper by consulting the
Prime Minister. Erdogan himself told of this incident, and I quote: “After he bought them, he
asked me who I would suggest as CEO. I gave him AkifBeki‟s name.”
Sometimes humor says it all…
This was the cover of the most read humor magazine in Turkey this week:
(Prime Minister‟s wife tells him not to spill any crumbs while eating a burger. And Prime
Minister, pointing at the man he uses as a paper towel, says “I won‟t I laid out a newspaper
boss”)
Erdogan‟s pressure against the press pays off.
Bosses who are afraid to lose their capital, therefore choose to lose their journalists. They
make their publications more in line with the government‟s policies. After every threat by the
Prime Minister, they lay off the journalists whom Erdogan had targeted. The ones who still do
their job get censored.
For the Bagimsiz magazine, which translates as Independent, published in Turkey, I
interviewed the former Hurriyet journalistCuneytUlsever. He told me about getting calls to
change his articles before they were published by someone his newspaper appointed to be in
charge of censoring. Then he was eventually laid off. He was so used to censorship that one
day when his article wasn‟t changed at all, he called them and asked if they weren‟t going to
change it.
We are part of this tragi-comical story of the press.
Sadly, there is even worse: getting arrested.
I, as part of the Odatv investigation, spent twenty months in Silivri Prison.
Odatv investigation started on February 14th 2011 when the police raided Odatv officials‟
homes and offices. There are 14 defendants in the case. They are charged with writing
columns, publishing articles and books against the government as part of the Ergenekon
organization. There are no acts of violence in the indictment. No bombs, no guns, no harm to
anyone. Yet, we are charged with terrorism.
After our arrest, government officials regularly said that our trial had nothing to do with our
journalist activity.
I am going to respond to that with a simple statistic. In the 134-page Odatv indictment, the
word “news” is mentioned 361 times, “book” 280 times, “column” 53 times, “interview” 26
times, and “article” 5 times. There is a reason why the police and prosecutors are angry with
us. FethullahGulen, whose followers are organized in the police and judiciary, has his name
mentioned 111 times in the report.
There is an interesting side to the story. The defendants of the case don‟t know each other.
Even though they were charged with being a terrorist organization, they met for the first time
at the court room. There is also no evidence in the indictment that they were in contact.
The accusations are even weirder.
Former chief of police HanefiAvci became a defendant in this case after he wrote a book
about the organization of FethullahGulen‟s followers in the police and the judiciary.
According to the charges, it is actually journalist NedimSener who wrote the book, not
HanefiAvci. And Sener was told by another journalist SonerYalcin to write the book. And he
was given orders by Professor Doctor YalcinKucuk. By this way, four people are charged
with terrorism with just one book. The fact that HanefiAvci said he wrote the book on his own,
gave detailed correspondence with the publisher, showed the drafts of the book, doesn‟t
matter. He has been under arrest for almost three years now.
In the case, I‟m charged with writing news stories and articles with the orders from
YalcinKucuk and SonerYalcin. There is also no evidence regarding this in the indictment.
And what is in the articles that I‟m charged for?
The prosecutor made the following classifications.
When the press releases and activities of NGOs, chambers and unions are reported, that is
classified as “provocation of the public”, the news on the lawlessness of the processof
Ergenekon and Balyoz cases are considered as “attempting to influence the trial”, stories
critical of government policies are considered as “staging a coup”.
The news weren‟t even read by the prosecutor. The words “revolution”, “war”, “Ergenekon”
were searched on Google and the found results were put into the indictment.
How do we know this?
For example, a review of a movie called “After Revolution” is in the report because the word
“revolution” is in it. Stockholm Peace Institute‟s research on the 300 days without war in the
history of humanity was published as a news story entitled, “How many days could humans
last without fighting?” They were included in the indictment because the word “war” was in it.
Even, a news pieceabout the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‟s press release was
included in the indictment just because of the words in it.
After seeing hundreds of ridiculous reasons like this in the indictment, the Turkish public
started believing that Odatv case is about journalism.
And how are defendants charged with being a terrorist organization when they don‟t know
each other?
The only base to this is the digital notes the police claims to have found in three computers in
their raids. These notes are treated as evidence to claim the defendants wrote articles, news
and books together.
And are these notes real?
The first time we saw these notes was the day we got arrested. Since then, we have been
trying to prove that they don‟t belong to us. We tried to get these computers investigated by
experts. But the prosecutors did everything to prevent that. They even seized the computers at
the university laboratory we gave the document copies to.
If you were charged with murder, your weapon would go under ballistic investigation. The
trial would be based on findings from this investigation. However recently in Turkey, in
terrorism cases, the suspects are accused based on documents on computers. Defendants are
arrested because their names appear on a computer file.
Until today, we have received four different reports, three from different universities in
Turkey, and one from an American information technology firm called Data Devastation. All
four of these reports revealed that these documents were uploaded to our computers via a
cyber virus attack.
This wasn‟t enough.
The court asked for a report from TUBITAK, a Turkish science foundation tied to the Prime
Ministry. During the 18th month of our arrest, the report arrived to the court. This report also
showed that the documents were not created, modified or opened at the computers. It was also
proven that there was a virus attack from outside on the computers.
Despite all this, the case is still open. I can assure you that this unjust court will sentence us.
And even if these documents were real, if defendants had organized to publish columns,
stories and books to throw down the government, is that a crime? If you ask me, good
journalism can bring down a government. Didn‟t Watergate scandal revealed by the
Washington Post cost Nixon his seat? In our country as well, there have been many
governments brought down by scandals made public by the press.
The allegations at the Odatv case are activities that are not illegal by law. If someone were to
look at Turkey from the outside, by looking at the cases, they would think that there was a
revolution or coup attempt every day. But despite the number of legal cases, there aren‟t any
concrete attemptsfor a revolution or a coup.
This is why the allegations in the cases are not about “staging a coup”, but rather “creating the
environment for a coup”. According to the indictment, the brains behind the case think that:
“if stability in the country is disrupted, there will be chaos, and chaos results in a coup.
Therefore any activity that disrupts the stability of the country, even if they are legal, is
creating the environment for a coup”.
This is the mentality that put allegations on the completely legal Odatv stories.
I had mentioned earlier that the second biggest threat to the press freedom in Turkey is the
followers of FethullahGulen in the police and judiciary system.
There is a detail here that is important for our case.
The book, “Halic‟teYasayanSimonlar” which exactly talks about this organization in the
police and the judiciary, is charged as part of the case. The author of this book HanefiAvci, in
specific detail and concrete examples, explains the use of illegal surveillance and creation of
false evidence against members of opposition. HanefiAvci, who has been a police officer his
entire life, was accused in four different investigations for terrorism.
The stories we published as Odatv revealed that in certain legal cases in Turkey, a group
inside the police establishment tied to Gulen movement was creating false evidence against
defendants. Let me give you few examples. We reported with evidence that the police added
139 contacts to an arrested defendant‟s cell phone to link him with certain terrorist
organization members. We published stories about the false evidence presented in the Balyoz
case. For example we found out that 10 days before the Kafes plan incident, the prosecutors
asked questions to defendants about it. We published the dialogues of the police next to the
bombs they claimed to have found in certain excavations. Believe me, we used legal court
information to access these.
And you know what happened after? The same police whose corruption we were
publishing,carried out the Odatv operation. The same prosecutors investigated the Odatv case.
The same judges made decisions.
Another defendant in the case is the journalist NedimSener. He investigated the murder of the
Agos newspaper‟s director Hrant Dink. He shed light on the role of FethullahGulen‟s
followers in the police in the case. Again, it was the same police who did the Odatv operation.
Another defendant AhmetŞık‟s book talked about organization of Gulen‟s followers in the
police establishment. The names Şık pointed towards were the ones that later carried out the
Odatv investigation. Şık‟s book got banned.
YalcinKucuk was a popular intellectual who talked extensively on this issue on television.
Gulen‟s followers made remarks targeting him. Later on, he was also arrested as part of the
operation.
We didn‟t know each other, but we shared something in common. We were the target of the
same group.
The point I‟m trying to make here is that, there is a government who is getting more
repressive every day. Erdogan and Gulen‟s supporters are using the police and the judicial
system as weapons for this transformation.
According to the research done by the Associated Press, Turkey has the most number of
people sentenced for terrorism in the world. The international press associations also reveal
that Turkey has the most number of jailed journalists in the world as well. The most of the
sentenced are charged under terrorism laws. This obviously does not mean that Turkish
people have terrorism in their nature. It means that the ones holding power in Turkey are
judicially eliminating everyone whom they see as obstacles, including us journalists. And in
order to do that, they resort to anti-terrorism laws.
The terrorism laws are defined in such a way that, people who are only responsible for talking
and writing, are charged with life in prison. The amnesty laws include the ones in prison for
murder or rape, but not the ones like us charged with terrorism.
The corruption is at such a level that, the month I was arrested, office of the prosecutor
requested the arrest of 175 people in Odatv and Balyoz cases. They were all arrested. So
basically the court did what the prosecutor told them to do. The court rejected the 176th
person‟s request for arrest. You know who that person was? A cop named AyhanCarkin, who
was involved in extrajudicial executions and unsolved murders and served in prison
previously with these charges. Carkin went public and confessed to killing many dissidents.
Despite these confessions, the court released him. The same court arrested a defendant who
came back to Turkey from abroad to testify on the basis that “he can escape Turkey”. Isn‟t
this a very clear picture of how politicized the judiciary system is?
I spent 20 months in prison. The day I was arrested, the prosecutor asked me 5 questions.
None of the questions to me or to other defendants had anything to do with terrorism. I
showed up to court during those 20 months. I waited for them to ask me questions. But during
those 20 months, not one judge or prosecutor asked me a single question. Then they released
me. I still can‟t explain my detainment or my release with rule of law.
There is a detail that international organizations don‟t touch upon. Even though we are
released, the threat is still there. We are still standing trial. There is still a danger of arrest.
The case files blink at us while we are doing our job, writing stories.
Here in Washington, there are certain things I must add.
Without a doubt, there are US citizens amongst you. Your ancestors came here and made
history in the 18th century by getting away from monarchy and colonialists. A fire of
revolution started in France and took over Europe. The wave of liberty came to my country in
the beginning of the 20th century. My country put on a fight to break from monarchy. My
people met modern values.
The values that were created then are now in jeopardy in Turkey. People in Turkey who still
cherish values such as justice and freedom are criticizing your government. The reason for
this criticism is the open support for the ones that turned Turkey into a land of repression. The
people in prisons believe that the United States are ignoring this lawlessness because of its
economic interests. I believe they have a point.
To conclude, we are at a period where we are slowly losing all our liberties and rights
including freedom of press. I can assure you that, regardless of the price, we will keep
fighting for our rights and liberties.
We know that humanity paid a steep price for these values. And no matter what, we will never
give up. In front of the court I was tried, I had said: “If I get out of here today, I will sit on the
steps of the courthouse and write the same. If I spend 100 years in jail, I will stand by the
same values the day I get out. If I don‟t have a right arm, I will write what I think with my left
arm.”
And we really did.
Each of us left prison as an author of a book. All of them placed among best sellers in the
country. My friend and I wrote a book by sending each other notes written with pencil on
pieces of paper, since we weren‟t allowed to use computers, and without seeing each other.
Our passion for writing what we believe in increased every day despite our situation in prison.
Our courage and persistence to write the truth kept growing.
Therefore, even though we are discussing the lack of press freedom in Turkey, I feel more
freethan I ever did.
Recently, a media boss walking up the ladder in the Turkish press called the Prime Minister
„his idol‟. An editor in chief referred to Prime Minister as „his Ata‟, a word meaning
forefather usually only reserved for Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
I think it is these people who give away their journalist integrities to governments who are
losing their freedoms.
Thank you for having the patience to listen to me.