Tag: Ahmet Sik

Turkey’s Glow Dims as Government Limits Free Speech

Daniel Etter for The New York Times

Protesters in Istanbul last month denounced the detention of at least 38 people, many of them journalists, suspected, the police said, of ties to Kurdish separatists.

By DAN BILEFSKY and SEBNEM ARSU

ISTANBUL — A year ago, the journalist Nedim Sener was investigating a murky terrorist network that prosecutors maintain was plotting to overthrow Turkey’s Muslim-inspired government. Today, Mr. Sener stands accused of being part of that plot, jailed in what human rights groups call a political purge of the governing party’s critics.

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“Erdogan is just another Putin. He loves power and will do anything to change the constitution to ensure his hold on power.”

Cato, Cleveland, OH

Mr. Sener, who has spent nearly 20 years exposing government corruption, is among 13 defendants who appeared in state court this week at the imposing Palace of Justice in Istanbul on a variety of charges related to abetting a terrorist organization.

The other defendants include the editors of a staunchly secular Web site critical of the government and Ahmet Sik, a journalist who has written that an Islamic movement associated with Fethullah Gulen, a reclusive cleric living in Pennsylvania, has infiltrated Turkey’s security forces.

At a time when Washington and Europe are praising Turkey as the model of Muslim democracy for the Arab world, Turkish human rights advocates say the crackdown is part of an ominous trend. Most worrying, they say, are fresh signs that the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is repressing freedom of the press through a mixture of intimidation, arrests and financial machinations, including the sale in 2008 of a leading newspaper and a television station to a company linked to the prime minister’s son-in-law.

via Turkey’s Glow Dims as Government Limits Free Speech – NYTimes.com.

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January 5, 2012
Turkey: No tweets from the courtroom!

“Today the judge is more strict” says the tweet, “One undercover police for each row! All monitoring the ones who are tweeting!“

In Istanbul-Turkey, today is the 2nd day of the hearings of 10 arrested journalists. Turkey is the leader country even before China and Iran with the figures of 107 arrested journalists.

Since the national mainstream media is not covering the news properly, colleagues of the detained journalists have no other choice but to tweet from the courtroom. According to Turkish law, the hearings are open unless a court order forbids it. But since yesterday, the judge has been constantly warning, then threatening those who try to give news from the courtroom. Today he said that those tweeting will be subjected to legal procedure. Neither the journalists nor the lawyers tweeting from the courtroom didn’t really understand what the “procedure” will be. Alas, they tweet anyway.

The political arrests have become the legal (and lethal) weapon of the Turkish government to silence dissents and journalists. According to AFP figures 1/3 of the terrorists in the world are in Turkey. It is necessary to remind that the 500 detained students, 107 journalist and thousands of Kurdish politicians are considered to be “terrorists” in these political cases. Ironically, yesterday Interior Minister of Turkey said “Terrorism is not only on the mountains but in poetry, in paintings, in the universities, in NGO’s. We will monitor those as well“.

To Keep updated, please follow @oemoral, @petite1ze, @etemelkuran for live tweeting from the court.

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Written by Ece Temelkuran

via Turkey: No tweets from the courtroom! – Global Voices Advocacy.

December 29, 2011
Turkey hearing casts spotlight on Gulen

December 15, 2011 12:54 AM

By Justin Vela

The Daily Star

Journalists Nedim Sener (C) and Ahmet Sik (facing camera, 3rd L) wave upon arrival at a courthouse in Istanbul in this March 5, 2011 file photo. (REUTERS/Ozan Guzelce/Milliyet/Handout/Files)

ISTANBUL: Turkish journalists Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener will face their second court hearing this month, nearly eight months after being arrested for aiding a “deep-state” group of coup-plotters who aimed to topple the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Currently, there are some 70 journalists jailed in Turkey. Yet the case exposes new fault lines emerging in Turkey.

Celebrated for their investigative work, at the time of their arrests the journalists were investigating a shadowy Islamic group known as the Gulen Movement, founded in the 1960s by Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who left Turkey for the United States in 1998.

While health reasons were cited for his departure, at the time he was likely to be tried over recordings in which he said, “Our friends who have positions in legislative and administrative bodies should learn its details and be vigilant all the time so that they can transform it and be more fruitful on behalf of Islam … However, they should wait until the conditions become more favorable … they should not come out too early.”

Gulen later claimed his words were taken out of context. He was tried in absentia on charges of trying to overthrow the secular state and acquitted in 2006. He is now free to return to Turkey, but remains living with followers in rural Pennsylvania.

The movement has grown into an international fraternity of schools, business associations, media outlets, and NGOs.

“They are powerful in Turkey and powerful abroad,” said Faik Tunay, an opposition parliamentarian with the People’s Republican Party (CHP).

He had visited Gulen schools in the Balkans and Central Asia and said that the students studying in the schools were the children of politicians and powerful business people.

Gulenists are also present in key positions within the education and interior ministries, police force, judiciary, and upper echelons of government, say many Turkey experts.

In April, hundreds of students protested in Istanbul when allegations surfaced that Gulenist students were being given the answers to exams for top universities and jobs within the state bureaucracy.

Prior to his arrest, Sik had completed a book called “The Imam’s Army,” which detailed allegations of how the movement sought to cover up its infiltration of the police force during an internal investigation. In March Istanbul police raided a printing house, confiscating the unpublished manuscripts in what press freedom organizations called “astonishing” censorship.

The book was widely circulated on the Internet.

For decades, the country’s powerful military considered itself the “deep state” or protectors of Turkey’s national identity. However, the so-called Ergenekon case, under which Sik and Sener are being tried, sparked a flurry of arrests, and led to the July resignations of Turkey’s top military commanders. AKP had proven able to control the military, which had ousted unfavorable governments in 1960, 1971, 1980 and 1997.

“With Ergenekon, the government tried to clean up the deep state, but they’ve created another deep state,” said Turkish journalist Ertugrul Mavioglu, who had investigated the movement.

While AKP, led by Turkey’s charismatic Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was immensely popular, the party could not have survived in power and tempered the military’s power alone, Mavioglu claimed.

“Congratulations to our brothers who support us beyond the ocean,” Erdogan said following AKP’s victory in a 2010 referendum on constitutional amendments, in what was widely reported as his first open reference to the Gulenists.

While senior members of AKP were previously members of Islamist parties, it was only when they began to feel threatened by the military did they join forces with the Gulenists, who had a strong hold over the country’s bureaucracy, Mavioglu said.

“They are not in the same groups because in the past they had a very different way, but they support each other.”

Now, the Gulenists allegedly aim to increase the wealth of its members, who are still not among the top ten richest people in Turkey, according to a source who did not wish to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.

They also aim to gain further influence in media and entertainment. The recently released movie Allah’s Devoted Servant, a children’s animation film that aims to educate Turks about the Islamic philosopher that inspired Gulen.

Some say Gulen merely promotes a moderate form of Sunni Islam.

Sahin Alpay, a columnist at Zaman, a newspaper considered to be a mouthpiece of the movement, described it as a “faith-based” movement.

“It’s playing a rather important role in supporting the idea of a free and democratic Turkey,” he said. “They are playing a very positive role in building bridges between Turkey and the outside world.”

He claimed the movement had schools in 120 countries. “The schools also serve to establish trade and commercial ties,” he said. “They playing an important role in supporting an open society and open economy in Turkey.”

He said he viewed the movement “very positively,” but said he was not a member.

Galip Ensarioglu, an AKP parliamentarian from Diyarbakir said the movement is “ a very important movement for Turkey.”

“Of course there are connections between AKP and the Gulen movement,” he said.

“Both are based on the support of the same citizens. Of course, the AKP doesn’t want to share its sovereignty with the Gulen movement. AKP supports them because they support education and health. After that they don’t support them if they act like a different state or another power. “

Tunay, the opposition parliamentarian, said the biggest threat the Gulenists pose was an increased polarization in society between those that want a more Islamic Turkey and those that don’t.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on December 15, 2011, on page 8.

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(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)

December 15, 2011
“000Kitap”: The Book That Is Scandalizing Istanbul

Posted by Jenna Krajeski

This month marked the thirtieth annual Istanbul Book Fair, an eight-day marketplace for new books and publishers in Turkey. The guest country was Egypt (Turkey is setting a publishing example for its neighbor in transition) and the writers Alaa Al-Aswany and Youssef Zeidan were among those flown in to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. But attention was stolen when, five days into the fair, a Turkish book called “000Kitap” (“000Book”) made its début.

In March, “000Kitap” (then a manuscript called “The Imam’s Army”) landed its author, the journalist Ahmet Sik, in prison, along with his colleague Nedim Sener. Sik’s manuscript connected the powerful Gulenist movement—an expansive network of people linked by the teachings of Sufi theologian Fethullah Gulen—to the police, supporting the already widespread theory that Turkey’s security forces were corrupted by Gulenist influence.

In spite of the content, the ban and arrest were a surprise. In Turkey, books are banned post-publication. “Going into a Turkish bookstore is like walking into a psychiatric ward,” Gareth Jenkins, a British journalist, told me. And there exist books containing far more controversial political analysis than Sik’s. By most accounts, Sik’s manuscript said nothing very new; it compiled existing documents related to the subject for public consumption. But Sik was arrested; he claims it was because he criticized Gulen; “If you touch him, you will burn!” he shouted while being led to a police car. After the ban, the manuscript was posted on the Internet and downloaded over a hundred thousand times.

The most notable thing is not the fact of Sik’s arrest, but the context. The government lumped Sik’s case in with the massive Ergenekon trial, an eight-thousand-page indictment of hundreds of people with alleged ties to the Ergenekon group, the rumored Kemalist organization that planned to overthrow the Turkish government, first by pitching the country into chaos. By attaching Sik to the Ergenekon case, the authorities accused him of terrorist activities, citing the book as both a tool and evidence.

The details and validity of the Ergenekon case polarize Turkish society. It’s viewed by some as a victory of democracy over corruption and terrorism, and by others as an ever-widening net with which to imprison any and all opponents of the government. Where people will stand on the case is not easily predicted. Take the country’s journalists. Some, like Gareth Jenkins, maintain that Ergenekon is a tool of censorship and wrongful arrest. Others think that the case is a monument to an evolving Turkey coming to terms with its past. Some Turkish leftists and liberals I’ve spoken to explain the arrests of journalists and intellectuals under the Ergenekon umbrella one of three ways. The charges are right; they knew the risk; collateral damage. Orhan Cengiz, a human-rights lawyer who supports the indictment, described the Ergenekon trial in this manner: “This is the first time in Turkish history that prosecutors and police found themselves dealing with crimes that indicted the military. A certain kind of psychology starts to appear. We are dealing with this enormous, huge, mighty enemy.”

But Sik’s arrest struck a different chord, and the journalist and his book have become a symbol for many of government oppression, the precariousness of freedom of expression, and the mismanagement of the Ergenekon case. “000Kitap” was published with a hundred and twenty-five “co-signers,” and hundreds more protested in front of the court house during the first phase of Sik’s trial. The outpouring appears to signal a shift in public opinion, the last straw in a series of arrests of journalists (according to Bianet, there are seventy-one journalists in prison, sixteen in connection to the Ergenekon case). “If the Gulenists had said, ‘Oh, we’ve seen worse and let it be published, no one would have said anything,’ ” Jenkins told me. “Putting him in jail was the real mistake.” As Esra Arsan, a professor at Bilgi University where Sik worked before his arrest, said to me, “There is an absurdity to Ahmet’s arrest, and he’s become a symbol of the government’s willingness to stifle dissent. It’s a turning point.”

Kerem Altiparmak, a professor at Ankara University’s Human Rights Center, agreed. “The government wants Sik’s arrest to have a chilling effect on others who might do the same thing. The protest shows that this will not be tolerated.” Sik’s book has transcended the words on its pages to become a meeting point for those who are steadily becoming unenamored with the Ergenekon trial.

A written statement by the hundred and twenty-five cosigners accompanying the publication of the book reads, “Every writer, thinker and journalist who is or feels behind iron bars, paying the price for defending free speech has a mark in this book.” Ozgur Gurbus, a journalist specializing in energy and environmental issues, signed the book. “It’s not my area of expertise, but if I want to say something or write something, then nothing should be should be able to stop me.”

“Ahmet Sik portrayed as an Ergenekon member really isn’t a convincing case,” said Ozgur Mumcu, a journalist with the Radikal newspaper, another cosigner. Sik’s political views are so opposite of the charges against him—and, as a journalist he’s put those views on record for years—that his arrest is, as Arsan said, “absurd.” It’s this absurdity, and the hubris behind it, that might end up being an effective tool against censorship and wrongful arrest. But so far there’s been no attempt at damage control: Sik’s trial has been scheduled for December 26th, and until then he and Sener remain in jail. And not everyone is in agreement. Orhan Cengiz, the human rights lawyer, considers Sik to be innocent, but not because what he was reporting was true, because “he might have been manipulated by Ergenekon people to write this book.”

Sik’s arrest exposes a flaw in the government’s “chilling effect,” partly because he also represents a new kind of foe. In a debate characterized by the rigidness of contradictory opinions, Sik is atypical. His opinion on Ergenekon changed as he researched, signaling perhaps that government pressure can no longer be used as a way to petrify opinions, that cool analysis of evidence could tip the scales of the debate. By first banning his book and then trying to silence Sik in jail, the government seemed to want to put a stop to his changing opinion, but in the process they’ve changed the public’s.

Photograph of Ahmet Sik by Ertan Onsel.

Read more https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/000kitap-the-book-that-is-scandalizing-istanbul#ixzz1g3dxcC7E

December 9, 2011
Is Turkey Using the Courts to Silence Critics?

By Pelin Turgut / Istanbul Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011

Journalists and human right activists protest in front of the courthouse in Istanbul during the trial of two prominent Turkish journalists Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener on November 22, 2011.

Mustafa Ozer / AFP / Getty Images

Nine months after they were first detained, two well-known and internationally acclaimed Turkish investigative journalists finally appeared before a judge on Tuesday in a trial that has become a rallying point for critics of Turkey’s curbs on freedom of expression. Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener are among 13 defendants, including editors of a hardline secularist website, accused of seeking to overthrow Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-leaning government — charges that international observers say have little evidence to support them.

“The prosecutors had promised to produce hard evidence to justify [the journalists’] pre-trial detention. Where is it?,” said Johann Bihr, head of the Europe desk at Reporters Without Borders, outside the Istanbul courthouse. “Contrary to what was always claimed, the case against them is based on their work as journalists.” (See TIME International’s recent cover story on Erdogan.)

Held up as an example of secular democracy for the Middle East, Erdogan’s government is increasingly under fire for its treatment of journalists, pro-Kurdish advocates and opposition activists. There are more than 1,000 cases before the European Court of Human Rights concerning the Turkish government’s alleged quashing of freedom of expression, according to officials. “This situation has a chilling effect on journalism and journalists in Turkey,” said Thorbjorn Jagland, secretary-general of the Council of Europe.

European MEPs, journalists’ groups and rights advocates were among the dozens gathered on Tuesday outside Istanbul’s so-called Palace of Justice — a pale pink edifice of granite and glass that squats over the center of the city. Part mall, part hospital in appearance and with 326 courtrooms, it opened in August as — it is said — Europe’s largest courthouse. The irony was not lost on those gathered on Tuesday. “They’ll need all those hearing rooms if they keep on detaining people,” quipped one journalist. (See pictures of homelessness in Istanbul.)

Turkey aspires to become an E.U. member, yet its penal code is in urgent need of reform. There are currently 68 journalists in jail — more than in China, according to the International Press Institute. They are frequently detained under vague anti-terrorism legislation and then wait for months before seeing a judge. “We clearly have a situation which needs to be solved to help Turkey move forward,” said Jagland. In addition to Sener and Sik, the defendants in this most recent case include editors of Oda TV, a hardline secularist internet news portal critical of Erdogan.

I have known Ahmet Sik for many years — we worked together at Reuters. A passionate leftist who has spent his career working for human rights — and being harassed for that work — he is being accused of belonging to, of all things, a far-right nationalist network called Ergenekon that sought to stage a military coup and overthrow the government. (Read “Why Syria and Turkey Are Suddenly Far Apart on Arab Spring Protests.”)

Sik was arrested in March, shortly before he was due to publish a book called The Imam’s Army, an account of the allegedly increasing influence wielded by the Pennsylvania-based imam Fethullah Gulen among Turkey’s security forces. Gulen is an elderly Muslim preacher who has millions of followers in Turkey — depending on who you talk to, he is seen either as a moderate voice for tolerance or a secretive and sinister figure seeking to Islamicize the country. Police seized and banned The Imam’s Army but it was circulated on the internet and a group of intellectuals and journalists recently reissued it under a collective moniker as an act of civil disobedience.

Hundreds of people, including several former generals, are currently behind bars pending trial in Ergenekon-related proceedings. The glacial pace of Turkey’s judicial process means that it can take months before a hearing. On Tuesday, the judge rejected a request that the 13 defendants be released, and then adjourned until mid-December. Any requests made by lawyers could result in similar delays, possibly dragging the trial out for months. (Watch TIME’s video “Turkey’s Unconventional Muslim Minority.”)

Separately, hundreds of people — mostly pro-Kurdish activists — have been jailed in recent months on charges of belonging to the KCK, allegedly an offshoot of the separatist Kurdish PKK. In October, prominent publisher and free-speech activist Ragip Zarakolu and a well-known Istanbul-based political science professor were among those arrested, prompting criticism from Europe and the U.S. Erdogan has thus far shrugged off criticism of the detentions — but as his aspirations to international leadership grow, he may find such practices less and less tenable.

via Is Turkey Using the Courts to Silence Critics? – TIME.

November 25, 2011
Turkish journalists face judge in test of media freedom

By Yesim Comert and Gul Tuysuz, CNN

November 22, 2011 — Updated 1836 GMT (0236 HKT)

Istanbul (CNN) — Several journalists accused of being involved in an alleged plot to overthrow the Turkish government appeared in an Istanbul court on Tuesday for the first hearing in a trial that is seen as a test for media freedoms in Turkey.

The 13 defendants in the case include two prominent investigative journalists, Nedim Sener and Ahmet Sik as well as editors of Oda TV, a hard-line secularist internet news portal critical of the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. They have been in prison awaiting trial for nine months. One of the defendants, a former intelligence officer, died recently of a heart attack while in jail.

The courtroom in the new sprawling judiciary compound was packed with journalists, foreign observers and family members of the defendants. A limited number of people were allowed into the courtroom due to lack of space, despite the fact that it was an open public hearing.

The trial was adjourned until December 26 to wait for a higher court to rule on a motion to replace the presiding judge, Resul Cakir. Defense lawyers argued that the judge could not rule impartially since he was a plaintiff in a separate case against one of the defendants.

Journalists as well as local and international representatives from human rights and press freedom organizations gathered in front of the court house demanding release of the jailed journalists. They carried banners in Turkish and in English that said “set journalists free” and “justice right now.”

International activists expressed growing concern over freedom of expression in Turkey, a country that is often seen as a model Muslim democracy for the Middle East. “This is the third time already we came to Turkey this year. It is very seldom we come to a country so many times. This time we are here to express our anger,” said Johann Bihr, head of the Europe and Central Asia desk of Reporters Without Borders.

Pavol Mudry, vice chair of the International Press Institute said, “It is not acceptable for journalists to be jailed for their opinion” and hoped to convey this message to the Turkish authorities in meetings with them this week.

Turkey is among the bottom 40 countries of the world on the press freedom index of Reporters Without Borders, dropping from 102 to 138 since 2008. According to the Turkish Journalists Union, Turkey is currently holding at least 63 journalists in prison.

One of the journalists behind bars is Sik. Prior to his arrest he was working on an investigative book known as “Imam’s Army,” about a powerful religious group led by Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim preacher and educator whose opponents see him as an influential voice for opposition to Turkish secularism. Gulen now lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania.

Police confiscated draft copies of the book during a raid on Sik’s family home in March 3. But the text showed up on the internet in defiance of the law and was downloaded by many. Last week the book was published in an act of civil disobedience with the signature of 125 journalists and writers.

Sik’s wife, Yonca, took a copy of the book to her husband in prison. When asked if she would want her husband to change the focus of his writings when he gets out of prison, she said “We’re not living through this for the first time. It’s what makes Ahmet who he is. We’ve come face to face with the state before.”

The government claims that none of the defendants in the case are being charged for their journalistic work but are in fact being accused of aiding and abetting the efforts of an alleged ultra-secularist gang called Ergenekon aimed at toppling Erdogan’s Islam-inspired government.

During the tenure of his career, Sik focused on exposing human rights violations by the state, rings of corruption within the government and unveiling the abuses of the Ergenekon gang. And that is what angers Sik more than anything else. “Yes, I am still very angry. It is ridiciulous that I am being charged with being in an organization that I could never politically be a part of or share the views of,” Sik wrote in response to questions CNN submitted to him in prison.

Sener, Sik’s prisonmate, is also a vocal critic of crimes committed by the state apparatus. He was awarded as a World Press Freedom Hero award from the International Press Institute for his investigative book about the 2007 assassination of Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor Hrant Dink and alleged involvement of state security officials.

In a written interview from prison, Sener told CNN, “The important thing is not that I am in prison. What is important is to find the truth and regardless of the cost to write it. I am willing to pay any price for that.”

via Turkish journalists face judge in test of media freedom – CNN.com.

November 23, 2011