REPRESSION IN TURKEY
Mar 17th 2012
Enemies of the state
Four journalists are released from prison. Dozens are less lucky
Sener is smiling, but unhappy
“HOW can I be happy when so many of my colleagues are not free?” The
question was asked by Nedim Sener, an investigative journalist who
this week was freed on bail, along with three other journalists, after
spending more than a year in an Istanbul prison on thin charges that
he was part of a conspiracy to overthrow Turkey’s ruling Justice and
Development (AK) party.
He is right to ask. At least 100 journalists are behind bars in
Turkey, more than in any other country. Most are held on terrorism
charges. But under Turkey’s nebulous anti-terror laws, even covering
a press conference by the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy party could
get you locked up. The pro-Kurdish DIHA news agency says 27 of its
reporters are in jail. Journalists who criticise Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
the prime minister, face the sack at the hands of timid media bosses.
Mr Sener was arrested last year with Ahmet Sik, a journalist who built
his career uncovering human-rights abuses. Mr Sener dug into alleged
police complicity in the 2007 murder of Hrant Dink, an Armenian-Turkish
newspaper publisher. Both men wrote books that were fiercely critical
of Turkey’s most influential Islamic movement, led by Fethullah
Gulen, a reclusive imam who lives in America. Many think that under
AK rule the “Gulenists” have infiltrated Turkey’s police force and
judiciary, and the journalists sought to prove this. “Those who touch
[the Gulenists] burn!” Mr Sik cried as he was arrested last year.
Pressure from the European Union and various human-rights groups
helped secure this week’s releases. And there are encouraging signs
that Mr Erdogan may soon resume the reforms which once endeared him
to Turkish liberals and his Western friends. These, Mr Sener noted,
ought to include dealing with Turkey’s prisons. Hundreds of minors
had to be shipped out of one in the southern province of Adana this
month following allegations of physical and sexual abuse.
Life was not that bad for Mr Sener, although he did lose 30kg (66lb)
inside. It was harder, he said, on his eight-year-old daughter, who
was forced to remove her skirt when visiting him (its studs set off
a metal detector). Police scoured her school notebooks for “evidence”
against her father. “She kept asking, ‘Am I a terrorist?’,” Mr Sener
said. In the eyes of Turkish prosecutors, she may well be.