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Veteran Turkish journalist convicted of terror propaganda in series on PKK

April 3, 2018 By administrator

Turkish journalist Hasan Cemal

Turkish journalist Hasan Cemal

Veteran Turkish journalist Hasan Cemal has been given a suspended sentence of three months, 22 days by a Turkish court for a series of articles documenting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) withdrawal from Turkey as part of an agreement with the government, according to a report by the Cumhuriyet daily on Tuesday.

Cemal, whose articles were published under the heading “Withdrawal Diary” on the T24 independent news website in 2013, had faced up to 13 years under Turkish terror and criminal law in a case opened against him four years later. He was acquitted in this trial, but the İstanbul 2nd Regional Court of Justice, a superior court, overturned the acquittal in November 2017 and ruled for a retrial, the Turkish Minute reports.

Cemal reappeared in court on Tuesday and was given a suspended sentence of three months, 22 days on charges of disseminating the propaganda of a terrorist organization.  “As a journalist, what I wrote at that time was how the road to the mountains [for PKK militants] opened up, in the search for an answer to the question of how it would not be closed. This was all journalism,” Cemal told the court at an earlier hearing.

“To bring about a prison case today about what I wrote in 2013 was to punish journalism. I defend peace rather than war, terror and violence. I will continue defending peace. I ask that I be found innocent.”

In November 2017, Cemal had also been given a suspended sentence of 15 months for “propaganda for an armed terrorist organization” and a TL 6,000 ($1,500) fine for “publishing a terror organization statement” in his other columns.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Hasan Cemal, turkish journalist

Turkey: Prominent journalist Hasan Cemal sentenced to jail for ‘terror propaganda’

February 14, 2017 By administrator

Hasan-cemal

Hasan-cemal, been doing journalism for 47 years

Damla Güler – ISTANBUL,

Prominent Turkish journalist Hasan Cemal has been convicted on charges of conducting “terror propaganda” due to a 2016 article regarding one of the leading figures of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), receiving a suspended sentence of one year, three months in jail.

In the second hearing of the case on Feb. 14 in which Cemal was charged with “conducting terror propaganda” and “praising crime and criminals,” an Istanbul Court of Serious Crimes sentenced him to a 15-month suspended prison term but acquitted him on a second charge.

The journalist was on trial for a July 11, 2016, column titled “Fehman Hüseyin.”

“I have been doing journalism for 47 years. For the first time, I am being accused like this for the articles and books that I have written,” Cemal said during his hearing. “I have never defended terror. I have never become a tool for terror propaganda. I have always defended peace. Journalism is not a crime. There is no law, freedom and democracy in a society where journalism is a crime.”

Cemal is separately on trial for terror-related charges allegedly committed while he was serving as a one-day editor-in-chief of daily Özgür Gündem as part of a solidarity campaign with the now-closed paper.

Özgür Gündem was shut down on Aug. 16, 2016, for allegedly conducting propaganda on behalf of the PKK and acting as the organization’s media organ.

During that case’s trial held on Feb. 14, prosecutors demanded Cemal’s imprisonment for up to eight years over charges of “carrying out terror propaganda.”

Along with Cemal, trials into more than 20 other journalists and intellectuals, including Ayşe Düzkan, Ragıp Duran, M. Ali Çelebi, Can Dündar and Necmiye Alpay, who participated in the solidarity campaign for Özgür Gündem, were also held at two Istanbul courts.

During the hearing of Alpay – a prominent Turkish linguist – prosecutors also gave their opinion and demanded her imprisonment for up to eight years on charges of carrying out “terror propaganda” and “releasing the organization’s press releases,” referring to the PKK.

The court adjourned hearings in the case into Alpay and several other defendants.

However, Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Central Board Committee member Çilem Küçükkeleş and publisher Cengiz Baysoy were given suspended sentences of one year, three months each in jail for conducting terrorist propaganda while participating in the Özgür Gündem solidarity campaign.

The pair was also assessed fines of 6,000 Turkish Liras each for “printing and publishing a statement from a terrorist organization.”

Source: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/prominent-journalist-hasan-cemal-sentenced-to-jail-for-terror-propaganda.aspx?pageID=238&nID=109730&NewsCatID=341

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Hasan Cemal, sentenced, Turkey

Turkish Journalist Hasan Cemal ’We will not leave this world to tyrants’

November 15, 2015 By administrator

233216P24’s Founding President veteran journalist Hasan Cemal spoke on Saturday at a symposium at Boston College, in Massachusetts.

Here is the full text of Hasan Cemal’s speech:

His name was Çetin Altan.
He was 88 years old.
He was one of Turkey’s leading writers.
A journalist.
A novelist.
A breaker of taboos.
Writing was the only thing he cared for in life, and he wrote what he knew to be true. Throughout his life he defended freedom of expression and independent and critical thinking, putting these essential building blocks of democracy above all else.
Last month, as he was dying, he said, “This is not the world I dreamed of, the Turkey I dreamed of.”
These words still sadden me. Just like that heart-rending sentence in the novel Ports of Call by Lebanese author Amin Maalouf:
“The future I hoped for was already gone.”
I think it’s the same for me.
Perhaps it is clear now, the future I had hoped for may never come.
I am 71 years old.
I have been an active journalist for 47 years.
Journalism is the only job I have ever known.
I have witnessed military coups.
I have seen my newspaper being shut down several times.
I have lost friends to political murders.
Many of my colleagues spent time in prisons, many were subject to torture.
In other words, I have had my share of heartache.
But, as a journalist, the heartache I felt at the end of last month was like none I had felt before. I witnessed a television channel (Bugün TV) and two dailies (Bugün and Millet) raided by order of the state.
On that day, law was razed to the ground.
Freedom was desecrated.
Media independence was held in complete disdain.
The right to property was hijacked.
Because government lackeys, accompanied by the police, invaded the newspaper’s editorial department.
They wanted to silence us, the journalists.
They wanted to cast a shadow over our world.
Let me explain.
Imagine yourself in the editorial department, the very heart of the newspaper.
The latest edition of the Bugün newspaper lies on the meeting table; only a few copies were printed and the paper’s distribution was obstructed by order of the state.
The headline is striking:

SEIZURE BY TRUSTEES!
The government lackey, named as the ‘trustee’, holds up the newspaper for all to see:
“This newspaper is a disgrace!”
Then he turns his attention to the headline, SEIZURE BY TRUSTEES, and asks:
“Do any of you share this opinion?”
One journalist speaks up:
“Yes.”
Trustee says:
“Take his name.”
The journalist continues:
“The newspaper is our honour.”
Trustee:
“This is your honour…?”
He adds:
“What insolence!”
He turns to a policeman in the newsroom and says:
“Take him away!”
And then continues:
“I don’t want to work with people who describe a court decision as a seizure.”
This was a clear example of ‘state terrorism’.

I do not want to live in a world where newspapers and television channels are so shamelessly terrorised by state pressure, I do not want to live in a world subservient to despotism.
As someone who has been a journalist for so many years, who has headed newspapers and spent his life in the nerve centres of newspapers, I put myself in the shoes of that young colleague of mine at Bugün. And I imagine that editorial meeting, that sacred assembly for journalists. I imagine the pomposity of that ‘honourable trustee’ spouting edicts and giving orders to the police, a man placed at the head of that table by order of the state, at the will of the Sultan in the Palace.
This image fills me with despair.

This is not the world I dreamed of.
In my world, there is no place for Tayyip Erdoğan, or more accurately, for the Sultan in the Palace.
Even if he did receive 49 per cent of the vote in the general election on 1 November, there is no place for him in my world.
Because in my world there is democracy.
There is the rule of law.
There is freedom of expression.
There are human rights.
There is an independent media.
There is a free media.
There is an independent judiciary.
There is separation of powers.
There is gender equality.
There is a respect for differences.
There is a multitude of voices.
There is zero tolerance of corruption, bribery and theft.
That is my world.
The world of Tayyip Erdoğan, the Sultan in the Palace who recieved 49 per cent of the vote on 1 November, is nothing like my world.
It is these democratic values, and particularly ‘freedom of expression’, that make up my world.
It was George Orwell who defined freedom as the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
In Turkey today, the world in which I live is not like the world described by George Orwell in this sentence.
Those multiple voices in Turkey’s world are, day by day, being reduced to a single voice.
Because the Sultan in the Palace, Tayyip Erdoğan, only wants his own voice to be heard.
He is a tyrant who is in love with his own voice.
And so he silences the voices of opposition and criticism in a planned and systematic way.
Just recently the offices of Turkey’s biggest newspaper, Hürriyet, were physically attacked.
Not just once, but twice.
And the ringleader of these attacks was an MP of the leading AK Party and the head of youth organization of the party, a member of the Sultan’s inner circle.
He faced no repercussions.
On the contrary, he was rewarded.
At the AK party convention held just a few days later, he was elected as a member of the convention’s steering committee.
During the last election campaign, he even posed in photographs together with Prime Minister Davutoğlu.
And there’s more.
He said that this attack on Turkey’s biggest newspaper had put an end to the newspaper’s ‘immunity’.
He went even further.
He admitted that he regretted not having waited outside the houses of the newspaper’s editor in chief, as well as an important columnist and television presenter, to beat them up.
During this same period , a columnist close to the Palace made this threat to the same journalists:
“We could crush you like a fly if we wanted to.”
A politician, who was made an MP by the Sultan in the Palace and who served as advisor to Erdoğan during his time as mayor of Istanbul, gave the following warning to the owner of Hürriyet:
“We’ll pull out your teeth, we’ll pull out your fingernails.”
No teeth or nails were pulled out, but a few days later the columnist and television presenter Ahmet Hakan was attacked outside his house by a group of assailants, breaking his nose and a rib
Now I ask you this.
Would you want to live in a world like this? I imagine you wouldn’t.
And nor do I.
This is not my world. This is the world of the Sultan in the Palace.

I come from a world…
… where a journalist was arrested and her mobile phone and computer seized because of a single tweet.
…. where a prime minister has declared social media to be a social menace.
…. where Twitter and YouTube were banned by government fiat.
…. where all a prime minister has to do is pick up the phone for a news item to be spiked, or a journalists fired.
…. where a prime minister can scold a newspaper owner down the phone about an article he published to such an extent that he reduces the man to actual tears.
…. where a prime minister declares those who hold different opinions from his own to be traitors.

I come from a world…
…where the prime minister appointed as Minister of the Interior his own undersecretary, a man who gave this order: [and I quote]
“Break down that journalist’s door and throw him in jail… If the prosecutor complains, throw him in jail too…”

I come from a world…
… where a prime minister’s undersecretary can say, “Shut down that journalist’s website! So what if there’s no court order? We’re the ones who make the laws, my friend… I’m talking about the will of a party that received 50 per cent of the vote. Don’t worry about it; excuse my language but screw the lot of them…”

I come from a world…

…where those who defend the rule of law – including the head of the Constitutional Court – are attacked for opposing the rule of the majority, even when that means shutting down Twitter and YouTube.

I come from a world…
…where the head of the country’s largest business organisation, TÜSİAD, is labelled a traitor for defending the rule of law as essential to business confidence.
And…
The prime minister has even accused the Central Bank governor of treason for not lowering interest rates.

Once again I want to point out that this is not my world.
This is the world of the Sultan in the Palace, who goes by the name of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
He believes that democracy simply means a majority at the ballot box.
He has not learned that getting the most votes is not a licence to violate democratic values, nor to force the surrender of the judiciary, nor to ignore the separation of powers, to trample on freedom of expression, to destroy free and independent media, nor to subjugate civil society.
The main qualification for journalists is the ability to ask questions.
Questioning is a way of life for us.
And for this reason we are not particularly popular, especially with politicians.
For example, in Turkey, President Erdoğan refuses to meet with journalists who may ask him any uncomfortable questions.
It has been years since he held a real press conference.
He can only be in the presence of journalists (I call them the court jesters) whom he knows will play by his rules.
But journalists will continue to ask questions.
No tyrant can divest journalists of this democratic right.

I realise that I have been talking for a while.
So in short…
In Turkey the fundamental values of democracy have been under attack for some time. And they are receiving blow upon blow.
The source of these blows that hold the rule of law in complete disregard is the Sultan in the Palace, or Tayyip Erdoğan, who continuously violates the constitutional oath he took as president.
I did not tell you all this in order to complain.
We live in different countries, but on the same planet.
This is a world where one’s troubles are not only his own; one’s troubles do indeed trouble the other.
When we know what each one of is living through, it helps us to work jointly toward making this small planet a better place.
I came here with this hope.
I have made this speech today with this hope.
Because I still have hope in this world, if not in individual countries.

Now, can you tell me what I, as a journalist of 47 years, should do in such a world, in the Turkey of today?..
The following words by the Peruvian novelist Vargas Llosa stick in my mind:

“The situation of the writer is one of constant rebellion, the role of devil’s advocate.”

He continues:

“… just as we did today and yesterday, we must continue to move forward in society, saying ‘no’, rebelling, demanding the recognition of our right to think differently…
… showing that dogma, censorship and arbitrary rule are the mortal enemies of progress and human dignity…”
Yes, we must continue moving forward.
But for how long?
I am 71 years old.
I have been an active journalist for 47 years.
During the 2006 World Cup in Germany, I spent a month writing about that leather ball.
I remember one particular day very clearly.
I was taking a train to Berlin for a match.
While browsing the Daily Telegraph, I read an interview with a journalist who was celebrating his 75th year in the job.
Next to the article was a black-and-white photograph of the journalist sitting by the window of a train, writing.
During the celebration dinner someone asked him:
“Why, at the age of 93, do you still switch on your computer every day?”
He answered by quoting the famous Housman poem:

‘’Up, lad; when the journey’s over, there’ll be time enough
to sleep.”

Let me say one final thing:
We will not leave this world to tyrants.

Source: Zaman

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: expression, free media, freedom, Hasan Cemal, tyrants

TELEVISION France 5: Armenian Genocide, the 1915 spectrum, 52 minutes, Sunday, April 12

April 11, 2015 By administrator

By Marie-Amélie Brocard

Hasan Cemal, the grand-son of Cemal Pasha, one of the planners of the genocide Photo credits:. Transparences Productions

Hasan Cemal, the grand-son of Cemal Pasha, one of the planners of the genocide Photo credits:. Transparences Productions

TELEVISION – On the occasion of the centenary of the Armenian Genocide, France 5 broadcast Sunday, April 12 a poignant documentary based on the testimonies of Turks whose history is linked to massacres of 1915.

Sunday, April 12, France 5 takes us to Turkey. Where the mention of the genocide of one million Armenians massacred by the Turks from 1915 to 1918 has been obscured, the chain decided to turn to the heirs. All contribute to a return of many faces on the history of the Armenian genocide. There Hasan Cemal, journalist and writer, grand-son of Cemal Pasha plannificateurs -one of the genocide-which, after a personal journey, married the Armenian cause and is now working to recognize the genocide . There also Fethiye Cetin, lawyer and human rights which, in adulthood, discovered the Armenian roots that her grandmother had hidden to survive when she was a child. She then led us in his footsteps in the village where the latter spent his childhood in an attempt to reconstruct its history. The camera goes to meet those who are trying to give a place to the Armenian community in the current Turkish society and into the museum erected in Yerevan, Armenia, in memory of the victims. But it also crosses Turks still deny activism with the reality of a genocidal massacre. A moving panorama of the weight of a controversial Turkish past.

Armenian Genocide of 1915 the spectrum, 52 minutes, Sunday, April 12 at 22:25 on France 5 as part of “The Case of the Century” presented by Fabrice d’Almeida.

Filed Under: Articles, Genocide Tagged With: armenian genocide, France-5, Hasan Cemal, Television

The book “1915 Armenian Genocide” Hasan Cemal in French released in bookstores on March 19

March 18, 2015 By administrator

arton109213-151x229The best-selling book “Armenian Genocide in 1915,” the Turkish journalist Hasan Cemal, grand son of Cemal (Cemal) Pasha one of three Young Turk leaders who committed the genocide of the Armenians has been translated into French notify us Armenian newspaper “Agos” in Istanbul. It will be released tomorrow, 19 March bookstore editions Ordinaries Prairies with the title “1915 Armenian genocide” (288 pages, 23 €). Hasan Cemal’s book appeared in Turkish in 2012 to “Everest” editions. Last year it was translated into Armenian and presented in Yerevan by the author. With a controversy during the presentation in Armenia. The Armenian translation had been amputated some passages relating to criticism of the author on the Armenian terrorism and the war of liberation of Karabakh.

Below is the summary of French book by the editor:
- “The deportation and massacre of Armenians in 1915, the question of their recognition and debate about the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, this time of the First World War when the imperial lands have undergone joint attacks by the allies and tsarist Russia have continued to agitate Turkey since its foundation. In 2005, contradictory versions of history face when a group of Turkish intellectuals stands for the recognition of the genocide. Among them, Hasan Cemal, grand-son of the last Minister of Marine and governor of Syria in 1916-1918, Jemal Pasha (1872-1922), considered one of the instigators of the genocide. He chose to recount here the individual and family experience. This book, which caused a stir in Turkey, also traces the journey of a man of the left, which Yerevan in the United States via France, in the Armenian diaspora, wants to reach out and pay tribute to his friend Hrant Dink, the journalist behind the process, who was assassinated in 2007. A key test in a process he inaugurated a decade ago and who intends to consider the Armenian part of the people of Turkey. “

Krikor Amirzayan

Filed Under: Articles, Books, Genocide Tagged With: armenian genocide, book, France, Hasan Cemal

Veteran Turkish journalist Hasan Cemal receives prestigious journalism award

March 13, 2015 By administrator

Turkish journalist Hasan Cemal (Photo: Cihan, Orhan Akkurt)

Turkish journalist Hasan Cemal (Photo: Cihan, Orhan Akkurt)

Turkish journalist Hasan Cemal who was named by Harvard University as its 2015 recipient of the Louis M. Lyons award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism received the award at a ceremony at the university on Thursday. the author of book the Armenian Genocide,

Cemal was chosen by Harvard’s Nieman Foundation “in recognition of a long career dedicated to championing freedom of the press in Turkey and as a representative of all Turkish journalists working today under increasingly difficult conditions.” report todayzaman

In a statement, members of the Nieman Foundation said: “Hasan Cemal and Turkish journalists like him have shown great courage in upholding the importance of a free press in their native land. Bearing witness and speaking truth to power are more necessary than ever in Turkey and other places around the world where journalists face government hostility, harassment, and arrest.”

The full text of the speech Cemal delivered during the award ceremony is as follows:

I know you’ve all seen those Oscar ceremonies where the award winner weeps and struggles to find the right words.

 Let’s face it; a journalist lost for words wouldn’t be much of a journalist.

The real danger is that by the time I’ve finished my speech, you might be wishing I were lost for words.

So I will try to be brief.

I said “try.”

I make no promises.

And even though my eyes are dry, I won’t begin to conceal that this is an emotional moment for me.

As journalists, we all share a secret. We are motivated by the impact we make, not the size of our monthly payslip. And there is no greater recognition than the respect of our own peers.

And which peers command more respect than the Nieman Fellows?

So let me begin by thanking you all so very much for this award. It means a great deal.

When I look at the list of people who have received this award in previous years, when I consider that I may be thought worthy to sit among such towering talents, as Edward R. Murrow, I think maybe I have done something with my life after all.

This award means much to me but I believe it means a great deal to the journalistic community in Turkey whom I represent – or at least those members of that community who are still prepared to listen to their conscience, who are still prepared to try to hold power accountable and who are still prepared to put their jobs, and even on occasion their own liberty on the line.

It was George Orwell who defined freedom as the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Please be assured: In Turkey there are still members of our profession who cherish that right and who are still prepared to defend that notion of freedom.

Let me tell you a little about them and about Turkey, the country where I have made my career.

I come from a country where a journalist was arrested and her mobile phone and computer seized because of a single tweet; a country where, for that single tweet, she faces five years in prison.

I come from a country where a prime minister has declared social media to be a social menace.

I come from a country where Twitter and YouTube were banned by government fiat.

I come from a country where all a prime minister has to do is pick up the phone for a news item to be spiked, or a journalists fired. This is a land where the prime minister can even decide who will or will not appear on a talk show.

I come from a country where a prime minister can scold a newspaper owner down the phone about an article he published to such an extent that he reduced the man to actual tears.

I know this because the boss was my boss -a man who made his fortune not through newsprint but through his business dealings with the government. So when the prime minister scolded he was in no position to answer back.

And the reason the prime minister was angry enough to make the man cry was because of something I wrote.

Allow me the luxury of quoting from myself:

“Producing a newspaper is one thing; running a country is another. Nobody should confuse the two, nor feel entitled to cross the line.

I know the line is a thin one, which is why in democracies all hell sometimes breaks loose.

Look at the outcry caused in America by the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate Scandal, and look at how many times valued members of the journalist profession in America were accused of treason by presidents and those who govern.

But history has always been on the side of those newspapers and journalists who, through news and editorials, stood up for peace, democracy and freedom of the press.”

I continue to quote:

It was back in the early 1990s. I was editor in chief of a newspaper called Cumhuriyet . One of the big names of the Turkish business community asked for my advice as he intended to launch a newspaper.

I asked him:

“Why do you intend to launch a newspaper? Do you want to have a ‘successful newspaper’ alongside a successful fridge and a TV factory and a successful bank? Or do you want to launch a newspaper to leverage political influence that will be greater than your rivals and competitors? Do you want to get into the newspaper business or use the newspaper to protect your real business?”

That question is more than valid today.

It is at the heart of the corrupt and unwholesome relation between those in power and those whose business it is to make power accountable.

But not only that.

It explains why a journalist elite in Turkey fail to do their jobs. Editors and leading columnists fail to defend journalism against those in power because they are unable to protect journalism from their bosses. The profession is divided and weak.

In order for the relationship between media and government to acquire public legitimacy, in order for the relationship between journalism and owners to obey ground rules built on respect, it goes without saying that journalists themselves must recover their own sense of integrity.

We cannot sit back as if our hands were tied. Our inaction marks the death knell of democracy and an end to the rule of law.

The column was never published in the newspaper I had worked for 15 years.

It was enough to get me fired.

But of course I had it published on the same day, at the on line newspaper T24, where I have been writing for the last two years.

Let me tell you a few other things about the country where I come from. It is a place where, during an election rally, the prime minister provokes the crowd to jeer at journalists– threatening women journalists in particular.

I come from a country where a prime minister declares those who hold different opinions from his own to be traitors.

In Turkey the prime minister appointed as Minister of the Interior his own undersecretary, a man who gave the order to a local governor to, [and I quote] “Break down that journalist’s door and throw him in jail… If the prosecutor complains, throw him in jail too…”

I come from a country where a prime minister’s undersecretary can say, “Shut down that journalist’s website! So what if there’s no court order? We’re the ones who make the laws, my friend.. I’m talking about the will of a party that received 50 percent of the vote. Don’t worry about it; excuse my language but screw the lot of them…”

I come from a country where the prime minister has ensured that the profits from the large government tenders he controls, are used to create media empires under his influence; where he has the final say on the appointment of editors-in-chief and columnists, and on basic editorial issue.

Not surprisingly this has resulted in a one-sided media totally under his control.

I wish I could stop here. I know I promised to try to be brief.

But there’s more.

I live in a country where there is an abuse of power and a media that is too intimidated to write about those abuses.

The result is no great secret– it is the degradation of rule of law.

We have seen the prime minister can get his own Minister of Justice to use his influence in the Supreme Court to overturn the acquittal of an important media tycoon;

…Where he can withdraw a large government tender from a group he dislikes and award it to a group that he favors…

Where a prime minister can, at a moment’s notice, remove judges and police officers from their posts in order to cover-up claims of corruption and theft that reach as far as his own family…

Instead of ‘rule of law’ we have a ‘police state’.

We have come to understand that a police state is one where the police do not obey the orders of the public prosecutor.

It is one where those who defend the rule of law – including the head of the Constitutional Court are attacked for opposing the rule of the majority – even when that means shutting down Twitter and YouTube.

In Turkey, the head of the country’s largest business organisation is labelled a traitor for defending the rule of law as essential to business confidence.

The prime minister has even accused the Central Bank governor of treason for not lowering interest rates.

We have witnessed a prime minister become so insensitive that he encourages his supporters to boo the mourning mother of a 15-year-old boy who was killed by police during a protest…

…a prime minister that meddles in people’s private lives, who pronounces on  everything from the length of girls’ skirts, to the number of children a family should have.

I know this is beginning to sound personal. So let me name names. I am talking about Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, prime minister for over a decade and since August, the Turkish president.

He is moving Turkey towards what he calls a presidential system but which is tantamount to one man-rule.

He has no respect for the rule of law.

He has no concern for the independence of the judiciary.

He does not recognize the separation of powers.

He believes that democracy simply means a majority at the ballot box.

He has not learned that getting the most votes is not a license to violate democratic values, nor to force the surrender of the judiciary, nor to ignore the separation of powers, to trample on freedom of expression, to destroy free and independent media, nor to subjugate civil society.

If he hasn’t learned this by now, the chances are he never will.

He is a man who could have led Turkey into the family of democracies, but who is now leading it back to the wilderness.

We are moving from a system of ‘military bureaucratic tutelage’ to a system of ‘civilian despotism’.

And all this is called by his partisans, the new Turkey and even a ‘people’s revolution’.

Today, the choice Turkey faces is whether it can still embrace fundamental values that turn the illusion of  democracy into real democracy.

In Turkey I am known for having coined the expression “gazeteci milleti” or the “journalist nation.”

The main qualification for citizenship of this nation is the ability to ask questions.

Questioning is a way of life for us. And for this reason we are not particularly popular.

And those who require not just 99 per cent but 100 per cent submission, don’t really like the “journalist nation.”

For example, in Turkey, President Erdoğan refuses to meet with journalists who may ask him any uncomfortable questions.

It has been years since he held a real press conference.

He can only be in the presence of journalists whom he knows will play by his rules. If, by chance, someone finds the opportunity to rear their head and ask a real question, they will find themselves on the receiving end of a severe dressing-down.

But journalists will continue to ask questions.

No dictator can divest journalists of this democratic right.

There will always be those who, for the right reason not just the wrong, want to leave the Journalist Nation. There always have been and there always will.

But there will always be those who have no choice. We are creatures of the Journalist Nation. It is the only place we can still breathe.

The following words by the Peruvian novelist Vargas Llosa stick in my mind:

“The situation of the writer is one of constant rebellion, the role of devil’s advocate.”

He continues:

“… just as we did today and yesterday, we must continue to move forward in society, saying “no”, rebelling, demanding the recognition of our right to think differently…

… showing that dogma, censorship and arbitrary rule are the mortal enemies of progress and human dignity…

Yes, we must continue moving forward.

But for how long?

I am 71 years old.

I have been an active journalist for 46 years. I have never worked in any other job.

During the 2006 World Cup in Germany, I spent a month writing about that leather ball. I remember one particular day very clearly. I was taking a train to Berlin for a match. While browsing the Daily Telegraph, I read an interview with a journalist who was celebrating his 75th year in the job.

Next to the article was a black-and-white photograph of the journalist sitting by the window of a train, writing. During the celebratory dinner someone asked him:

“Why, at the age of 93, do you still switch on your computer every day?”

He answered by quoting the famous Housman poem:

“Up, lad; when the journey’s over, there’ll be time enough to sleep.”

I hope not all of you are asleep. I really am nearly done.

I have told you about the country I come from. But I know full well there are many countries whose journalists could stand here and make a similar speech. And it is not only journalists who suffer oppression.

There are many others who live under the pressure of dictatorship.

So if you ask me, what journalists do that makes them different, it is that we are the  voice of those who have no voice.

We cry out where others cannot.

And we make the whole world hear the cry that would otherwise remain lodged in the people’s throat.

What I am describing is not just true of underdeveloped countries. As a profession, we must find ways to make ourselves heard – to shout with an ever firmer voice.

I have devoted my life to this profession, and there have been times when I have asked myself whether it was worth it; and frankly sometimes I had to answer “no”.

When that happens, “Hasan CemaI,” I tell myself, “You  never had a choice. What other job could you do?”

That was before I got fired. But when I did get fired I did what any member of the Journalist Nation would do.

I started all over again.

In my case it was T24 one of Turkey’s new and brave on line newspaper.

A few days after I was told to put down my pen, I walked up a mountain on the Turkish Iraqi border with retreating Kurdish guerrillas. I went into the field to report and to write.

And when I got home, I began devoting time to founding an organization called P24, a civil society organization which encourages editorial independence and quality journalism.

How do we do that?

The first step is not to give up.

That too is not always easy.

But on a day like today, standing before an audience of distinguished colleagues, witnessing solidarity and friendship, I realize that my modest struggle is shared. So ask me on a day like today whether devoting an entire life to journalism was worth it.

This award is the answer.

Yes, it was worth it.

Thank you all for this day, for this prize and for your attention.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: award, Hasan Cemal, Journalist, Turkish

Yervant Dink “Hasan Cemal life is in danger! THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOK “THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE-1915”

December 21, 2014 By administrator

arton106344-480x241On December 11 in Yerevan during the presentation of his book “Armenian Genocide in 1915,” translated from Turkish into Armenian Hasan Cemal, the grandson of Cemal (Cemal) Pasha one of the organizers of the Armenian Genocide was the subject a scandal. The Armenian translator Roupen Melkonian had accused Hasan Cemal for asking -with the help of the editor Hrant Foundation Dink- the withdrawal of several passages in the original book in Turkish. In these passages including Hasan Cemal criticized “ASALA terrorist organization” and referred to “the occupation by Armenia of Azerbaijani territories.” These revelations during the public presentation Hasan Cemal’s book had the effect of a scandal, which led the author and journalist Hasan Cemal to cancel its upcoming appointments presentation of the book in diaspora.

In an interview with our fellow Armenian Tert.am, Yervant Dink, brother of Hrant Dink says it is worried about the life of Hasan Cemal whose head was a price by the Turks military. “Turkish armed groups,” Tchétiénner “have already decided the fate of Hasan Cemal. There is an atmosphere of fear around his scheduled murder and now his life is in danger, “said Yervant Dink. For passages removed his Armenian version of the book by Hasan Cemal, Yervant Dink evokes a translator handling and minimizes About Hasan Cemal. “He has already stated that it may also be wrong about certain facts or matters as it holds not the absolute truth, “said Yervant Dink about Hasan Cemal.” This book of Hasan Cemal on the Armenian genocide is not written for Armenians, it is primarily the 80 million people in Turkey. The Armenian player knows the reality of the Armenian genocide (…) we want that in Turkey the distribution of this book reaches the million copies. “Said the brother of Hrant Dink.

“In Turkey, Hasan Cemal is recognized as a great editor and writer. Of the 80 million people of Turkey at least 60 million know. Hasan Cemal not only expressed his views on the Armenian genocide, but also on other issues such as Kurdish southeast of Turkey or the question of the Alevis. The Kurdish question is now the subject of negotiations, Hasan Cemal was one of the architects of this dialogue. Feel its influence in Turkey! “Continues Yervant Dink.

He continues, “In Turkey there are some hidden nationalist forces, armed groups that specifically act to a national goal. They have already decided the fate of Hasan Cemal. The risk of his assassination is present. His life is in danger. Its position in favor of national minorities are not appreciated by those nationalist forces. Hasan Cemal has often opposed the armed force, the force of power, and Turkey there is a strong personality who faces these forces. The life of this man is also at risk for bringing to light the issue of the Armenian genocide … but I see that in Armenian, there is no information about it … (…) I see now some groups in Armenia want to dirty the name of Hasan Cemal. This is also the case in Turkey, where for example the Talaat Pasha Committee carries a serious hatred against Hasan Cemal. And now this man fell into the fire! Turkey now we fear for his life. “Yervant Dink continues,” If I speak in Turkey of the Armenian genocide, the Turks say that I am Armenian, and my words will not be heard strongly. But the word of a man like Hasan Cemal will be much heard and reach faster the ear of government. Our claim is field in Turkey is in Turkey that we must be active. »

Finally, on the issue of recognition of the Armenian Genocide Hasan Cemal, Yervant Dink concludes, “Hasan Cemal said when he was in Armenia” I am a man, I am not a government official, but if I were, I would recognize the Armenian genocide and ask forgiveness to the Armenians. And whether to raise the issue of compensation should also address and achieve. “ What should he say even stronger Hasan Cemal? The grandson of Cemal Pasha said that there was genocide, we do not say that this statement is sufficient. Myself for this book Hasan Cemal I have criticisms and I’m fifty questions. “

Krikor Amirzayan

Filed Under: Articles, Genocide Tagged With: armenian genocide, author, book, Hasan Cemal

’I forgot how many times I’ve been declared a traitor’

November 12, 2014 By administrator

196762_newsdetail(Illustration: Cem Kızıltuğ)

By  HASAN CEMAL

This is true. I forgot how many times I’ve been declared a traitor in my 46 years as a professional journalist. They have declared me a traitor or a CIA or KGB agent because of my columns and my stance on some critical issues as a journalist. Some even clearly stated in 2005 that they would execute me themselves and published statements on the front pages of newspapers to that effect, like, “If martial courts are set up some day, and if Hasan Cemal is given the death penalty, I would be one of those who would be willing to execute him.”**

‘Communist, separatist, fundamentalist, traitor, parallel’

 

This is how this country behaves. If you do not subscribe to state clichés about certain major and critical issues, and if you do not buy the lies of the official history and instead criticize the heads of the state, you are labeled a traitor. Critics have always been fearful of being labeled communists, separatists, fundamentalists, parallel operatives or traitors in this country. These red lines were drawn through defamation campaigns, persecution and imprisonment. Through them, critical stances and pro-freedom views were restricted and discouraged in Turkey. Questioning the points of view of political administrations has always been a difficult task in this country, and it is still a dangerous endeavor.

Figures in Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s administration frequently declare people traitors.

 

Erdoğan’s most recent traitor is İhsan Yılmaz

 

They have declared me a traitor and a CIA or KGB agent due to my books, columns or views on certain critical issues.

There are yet more striking examples in this regard. President Erdoğan declared a columnist a traitor because of a speech the columnist made. He said: “There are some traitors who raise some false claims in the US that religious schools are being opened and alcohol is banned in Turkey. They simply commit an act of treason by smearing their country.” This traitor is İhsan Yılmaz, who teaches at Fatih University and writes columns for Today’s Zaman. Yılmaz defends himself with the following:

I analyzed the militarists and authoritarian figures of the past so I have the right to do the same for the current administration as well. They are trying to demonize the Hizmet movement through me. I never called the AKP [Justice and Development Party] jihadist or pro-al Qaeda. I did not even call them Islamist or neo-Kemalist. I called the post-2011 AKP Kemalo-Islamist. With this reference, I tried to explain that the Kemalists had persecuted the religious groups and others in Turkey in the past and that the AKP is doing the same now under the guise of religiosity. And I call this Kemalo-Islamism. I have written a number of columns on this subject.

I never said they make everybody imams. What I was trying to say is that a growing number of imam-hatip schools are being opened as vocational schools, and students were left with no choice but to enroll in those schools. I was trying to say that the system redirects those who did not indicate a preference for the imam-hatip schools. I am not against imam-hatips. I am against the enrolment of students in these schools when they do not want to do so. New imam-hatips may be opened. This is not a problem at all; but if the state converts a school into an imam-hatip school without the consent of the parents, this will not make these people love religion.

As for the arguments on my remarks about alcohol … I object to Erdoğan’s attempt to justify policies on alcohol use with religion. I believe Erdoğan resorts to religion for such a critical issue because this is part of a bigger plan and he is a very experienced politician. You should consider this together with the lies suggesting alcohol was consumed in a mosque [in Dolmabahçe during the Gezi Park protests] and that a woman wearing a headscarf was attacked in Kabataş. If a prime minister refers to alcohol as something prohibited by religion, religious people may not be disturbed by this because, well, we are aware that alcohol is banned under our religion. But millions of others may be disturbed, and this raises tension in this country and disrupts social harmony.

Would Erdoğan make the same remarks in 2005? I am saying that Erdoğan’s discourse is evolving into an Islamist language. I believe that Islamism is the use of Islam for political goals. Islamism is the ideology of seizing power and making people more religious by reliance on state power. This hurts religion and makes people hypocritical. What is being done in Iran is a different version of this. Of course, Turkey is pretty different from Iran in many respects; however, it is possible to observe some common characteristics of Islamism everywhere, including dictating religiosity and using religion for political purposes. I never said Turkey is becoming Iran. I am saying that Turkey is becoming more authoritarian like Iran, but it is not there yet. I have already said many times that Turkey would never become Iran.

 

Targeting someone because you do not like his views

This is an excerpt from İhsan Yılmaz’s piece. You may or may not like his views. But if you accuse him of treason, this would be unfair. And if you turn this into a campaign of defamation, then you are persecuting him. If you do so, you ignore some basic values and standards of democracy. If you do so, you prove that you are moving away from the shores of democracy pretty swiftly. In democratic countries, presidents or prime ministers would not make remarks declaring their critics traitors.

It is shameful.


* This column by journalist Hasan Cemal originally appeared in Turkish on t24.com

** Cemal, Hasan. “1915: Ermeni Soykırımı” (1915: The Armenian Genocide). Istanbul: Everest Yayınları, 2012. p. 6

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Hasan Cemal, traitor

Paris: Hasan Cemal grand son of Djemal Pasha, to AGBU: the honor of Turkey

October 25, 2014 By administrator

DSCN4462-480x360-480x360How come to recognize the Armenian genocide when is the little son of Djemal Pasha, one of the three organizers with Talat Pasha and Enver Pasha Company extermination? How to make this gesture when ADDITION your grandfather was the victim of a commando vigilante Armenian? These are the birth pangs of this intellectual, both very intimate and very symbolic of the bad conscience of his own country, came to talk with Hasan Cemal Friday evening in Paris. The man who was on the platform of Alex Manoogian AGBU center had another life before move toward recognition of the Armenian genocide. He was columnist for Milliyet, well known journalist in Turkey. Considered one of the opinion leaders in the country, he in addition, the ear of the authorities. Social status who suffered the consequences of the publication of his book event in 1915: the Armenian genocide, which was released in 2012.

This book has sparked controversy and he came to explain the genesis echoes the personal questioning that begins to engage Turkey on this crime founder erected in real national taboo. Prohibits a state that has started to crack in the years 70-80, with the emergence of the Armenian cause in the international news, and that has been eroded by the work of early scholars and publishers Turkish historians on the issue in the 90s, but that was largely undermined by the action of Hrant Dink. Work, words, and the tragic assassination of Armenian journalist of the seat in front of Agos newspaper in Istanbul in January 2007 was the catalyst for free speech on the Armenian genocide, he explained.

Hasan Cemal, Samson Ozararat, Alexis Govciyan.

Hasan Cemal posed in front of a packed a very deep series of questions about taboos, scourges of nationalism, racism, Holocaust denial, but also the function of intellectuals in his country. How can we live in an environment that forces to hide its origin? If he asked, referring to the case of two of its illustrious confreres columnists, Mehmet Ali Birand and Ilhan Celik, which had to wait for death to learn that was the first Kurdish mother and second mother Armenian. Secret they had hidden throughout their lives. These are banned, generated by, which has so long imprisoned his own thought, Hasan Cemal has shelled before an audience Turkish-Armenian who drank in his words Turkish dominant ideology.

DSCN4500-480x360-480x360Referring to “the fear of history” to which Turkey is facing, he told the process that brought nationalism to theorize and put into practice the unity of its people, trying to merge in a share of the Turkishness differences among Sunni Muslims and by, secondly, the elimination of non-Muslims.
“Do you have any taboos? “Hasan Cemal launched in the room. “Mine is genocide. And it is also that of my country. “ And yet, “we can not escape history” he exclaimed denouncing nationalism as a disease. “We need to move the stones.” Even though the year was it painful. For Hasan, who has the most “moving stones” to lose his life is Hrant Dink, with whom he says he forged an imaginary dialogue, inside the genocide memorial in Yerevan on this day in the summer of 2008 where it was collected. A tribute to his friend close this fine speech writing, that simultaneously translated Kirkor Adjéranian and the content will be published in the Turkish press on 25 October.

The evening was followed by questions from the audience. Hasan Cemal to specify particular he has little family. Just two cousins ​​who have not criticized his book. He referred to the little son of Enver Pasha, who worked in Turkey for an American firm weapon and daughter of Talat Pasha, chemist, that chance led him to work for a time with his father, eldest son of Djemal Pasha, in a cement company. He has no contact with them. On the issue of reparations, Hasan Cemal said he was not an expert in the field and returned the book to the public, showing all the same knee-jerk reactions aroused by the mention of this problem in Turkey … However, he thinks that Turkey will eventually recognize the genocide. Citing the difficulties of France to confront the war in Algeria and even those from Germany (he said that 65% of Germans had expressed hostile gesture Willy Brand, who was kneeling at Auschwitz) he believes that Turkey is not the only country in the world to back the dark pages of its past, even though he fought this attitude. He also qualified as a crime against humanity that the Armenians were uprooted from their land which he thinks they keep nostalgia.
The meeting ended with the signing of the book Cemal. A book in Turkish awaits translation into French.

The intellectual was accompanied by Ozararat Samson, who runs with Kirkor Adjéranian SOS Armenia-Cote d’Azur, co-organizer of the meeting with AGBU ile-de-France.

Alexis Govciyan, President of AGBU Europe, who introduced and closed the meeting by announcing that it rightly was exceptional, said, aptly, the words of Raymond Aron: “Men are the history, but they do not know the story they do. “The flower of the Turkish elites seems all fine and well if his eyes open at the same time his heart on this terrifying episode that marked the birth of the Republic. Comments that led Antoine Bagdikian, president of the ANACRA (Armenian veterans and resistant) to proclaim from the ranks of the public he saw Hasan Cemal “the honor of Turkey.” A widely shared by the audience that evening feeling.

Photo Krikor Djirdjirian

Saturday, October 25, 2014,
Ara © armenews.com

Filed Under: Genocide, News Tagged With: AGBU, armenian genocide, book, Hasan Cemal, Paris

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