Hüseyin Aykol – guilty of journalism

The assault on Özgür Gündem shows no sign of diminishing.

Dozens of journalists have been thrown in jail. There probably remains nobody to have worked for the paper and not suffered power’s wrath. From its responsible editors to journalists, from its proprietor to printworker and distributor, or even its reader, almost everyone has had their share of oppression, arrest, torture and imprisonment.

There have been murdered journalists and distributors. Governments have changed but the assaults the press undergoes have not subsided. How many journalists’ homes have been raided, how many kidnapped to end up missing in the region and in the west? How many have been imprisoned?

They set fire to the paper’s predecessor. The voice of the time was Özgür Ülke. A full 25 years ago.

Kurdish journalism is an ordeal.

But, at the same time, it is a hub of resistance.

Kurdish journalism has become an eternal fountain.

This resistance has continued ever since the first published Kurdish newspaper. Kurdish newspapers have always courted oppression since Kürdistan, which the Bedirxan brothers published in exile in Cairo on 22 April 1898. In Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, Farsi. They have suffered oppression everywhere. Kurdish journalists have diced with death. It has been a full 121 years.

Celadet, Kamuran, Cegerwxin, Doctor Nurettin, Kadri Can, Osman Sabriç.

They have all flowed by like a river.

Like the Tigris. Like the Euphrates.

Consciousness and a legacy was created. A culture was formed.

It continues nowadays with Yeni Yaşam and others.

These are the thoughts that came to mind as Hüseyin Aykol was detained the day before yesterday.  Akyol was arrested in his Ankara home and thrown into jail. He was sentenced to three years and nine months and his sentence was upheld at another court without even going to the Court of Cassation.

Those who close newspapers under decrees with the force of law do not stop at this and carry on prosecuting and imprisoning right down to duty editors-in-chief. Ayşe Düzkan was imprisoned for displaying long-time solidarity. Mehmet Ali Çelebi was released from prison the day before yesterday. Sentences have been handed down to Hüseyin Bektaş, Ragıp Duran and many more journalists. Many intellectuals, writers and journalists who engaged in solidarity with the paper have been sentenced. Aslı Erdoğan, who was a Publishing Solidarity Board member and columnist on the paper, also did a hefty stretch in jail.

Hüseyin Aykol has had other punishments for journalism. Akyol, as an Aegean Turk, has devoted the bulk of his life to Kurdish journalism. It is as if he is being punished because he demonstrates solidarity with Kurds to Turks.

Akyol is an intellectual, a revolutionary, who has incurred the state’s wrath for his thoughts and his work since back in the 60’s. He has been jailed many times from then until now and has become acquainted with dozens of jails. He has done journalism since the 70’s. He writes and thinks. He has made translations of many writers. Dozens of books, dozens of articles and dozens of lectures bear his signature. He is a press worker.

Akyol is investigative, inquisitive, inquiring and, to the same degree, also naive and respectful and laden with love and friendship.

I do not know his current age but he is one who has managed to stay young. He conducts his work with youthful excitement and embraces his work with that excitement.

His waking hours pulse with the pains and resistance in letters from the incarcerated and wherever I see a letter from one of the incarcerated my thoughts always turn to Akyol.

They detained Hüseyin Aykol, who is pushing on for seventy, the day before yesterday.

Cumhuriyet newspaper’s columnists and staff are still in jail. Turkey ranks highly among countries where journalists are jailed.

Journalism is still deemed to be a crime in this country.

Writing the truth and criticizing ruling parties is a crime. Exclusion from the categories of crony, pool or Palace media suffices to make one the focus of attacks.

With the crony media on a daily basis full of blood and violence, gushing with malice and hatred, laden with threat and blackmail and replete with defamation and accusation, and with it turning the facts inside out and passing on information of dubious veracity as headline news, it undergoes no prosecution. However, trials are filed against papers that write the truth, punishments are made to rain down on them and journalists are imprisoned.

With the millions who are sick of and turning away from the crony media showing increasing interest in social media that gives an insight into the truth, publishing outlets that SETA (the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research) targets and newspapers that it calls “marginal” but publish as representatives of a powerful world view and as the truth permits, so do the attacks increase.

There is no other explanation for the targeting by SETA, the detentions and the duress that looks set to increase.

The Palace extension SETA accuses many press outlets and opposition journalists of being “extensions” in the report it has published. It targets such newspapers as Evrensel, Birgün and Yeni Yaşam and non-crony outlets.

Akyol’s detention following that famous palace-supported report that virtually brands many press outlets and journalists of being secret agents is yet another irony. (EVRENSEL DAILY)

(Translated by Tim DRAYTON)