22nd Metin Göktepe Journalism Awards are given to the owners

The 22nd Metin Göktepe Journalism Awards will go to their holders in a ceremony to be held on 10 April.

This year’s contest in the Metin Göktepe Journalism Awards, the first of which was presented in 1998 to keep alive the memories of Evrensel reporter Metin Göktepe and journalists who put down their lives in the course of duty and to encourage truth-based reporting among young journalists, was won by Zehra Özdilek for the report published under the lead headline “Zindaşti bomb” in Cumhuriyet newspaper. A photograph of former AKP parliamentarian Burhan Kuzu and Iranian drugs baron Naci Şerifi Zindaşti dining together was included in the report.

With Sevgi Şahin and Mustafa Soybaş for their part winning the Visual News Award for their report that included the police attack during the action staged by the Saturday Mothers on their seven hundredth week and was broadcast on Fox TV, the Photograph Award went to Rıfat Doğan from Artı Gerçek’s website, for the photograph entitled “The Saturday mothers and journalists.”

With Gençağa Karafazlı from Rize Nabız newspaper taking the Local Journalism Award for the report headlined, “Is the Uzbek woman killed at the Princess Casino not worth one lari?” two special jury awards were also made in this year’s contest.

Fatma Yörür and Özgür Söylemez of Artı TV took a special award for the report they made having conducted interviews at the construction site with workers who had downed tools in protest at the working conditions at the third airport mega-project, as did Uğur Şahin of Birgün newspaper for the report “They have set father and daughter against one another” comprising a striking example of the point reached in “defamation of the president” trials.

The awards in this year’s contests were bestowed by the jury consisting of Celal Başlangıç, Elif Yılmaz, Faruk Bildirici, Fatih Polat, Gökçer Tahincioğlu, Mehveş Evin, Nazım Alpman and Semra Kardeşoğlu.

WHO IS METİN GÖKTEPE?

Evrensel newspaper reporter Metin Göktepe was tortured to death by police officers following his arrest at a news scene in 1996 had said, “I’ve just got to cover it.”

Today, as for the past twenty-two years, Metin Göktepe’s birthday is marked with the journalism award given in his name.

Metin Göktepe came into the world on 10 April 1968 in Çipil village attached to Sivas’s Gürün sub-province. Spending the first eleven years of his life here, Metin was the seventh child of an eight-child working family that earned its living from agriculture and husbandry.

He enrolled at the Department of Public Finance of İstanbul University’s Faculty of Economics in 1989. Metin was an active member of the student youth struggle at university. He was arrested numerous times in these periods in which the student and worker movement was in full swing.

KILLED BY POLICE OFFICERS

Learning in March 1992 that a magazine Haberde ve Yorumda Gerçek (Truth in News and Commentary) that would focus on the development of the workers’ and working people’s movement was to appear, he started working there. Metin, who worked as a reporter for Haberde ve Yorumda Gerçek magazine for his entire media life, was involved in our newspaper Evrensel at its inception in June 1995.

Metin was arrested in İstanbul by police officers while covering the funerals of Rıza Boybaş and Orhan Özen, who were killed in Ümraniye Prison on 8 January 1996. Having been tortured to death, Metin’s remains were left close to an indoor sports hall where they were taken.

The police officers responsible for killing him were eligible for the conditional release under pardon known popularly as the “Rahşan pardon” having served a total of twenty months. Metin Göktepe is the first journalist to be killed under arrest whose murderers were prosecuted.