I am everything they hate!

Text Sedef Kabaş, journalist

The spectrum of risks journalists are facing in Turkey has continually grown in more than 20 years under the regime of the AK Party: Censorship, self-censorship, political pressure, mobbing, forced unemployment, criminal complaints and threat campaigns that government trolls continue day and night on social media, police raids on your home in the middle of the night, imprisonment or even getting killed…

This is a country ruled by politicians whose crimes have pervaded international borders and whose transgressions have breached the ends of this world. As they are enjoying the blessings of the very symbol of extravagance of the glamorous and glittery palace life, misery and poverty have darkened the lives of tens of millions in the country that they rule. AKP has created a Turkey where 16 million of its people try to survive in extreme poverty and 50 million live below the poverty line. This government has normalized corruption and poverty as a fate to be endured by society.

I started to ask undesirable questions again… Education and health sectors took a hammering, the Turkish lira suffered the greatest loss of value in its history, the unemployment rate spiked to double digit level, society is rapidly hitting bottom in an unstoppable economic depression. The politics of the AKP and MHP alliance consist of marking those who voice problems as the problem itself, instead of solving those problems.

In December of 2013, allegations of money laundering and bribery shook the ruling AKP government to its roots. Many oppositional media members of the period called out the events as “the power struggle between the AKP and the Fethullah Gülen movement” or “a coup against the government.” The general concern was that if you reported otherwise, it was almost inevitable that you would be accused of being a “Gülenist”.

I listened to my conscience and posted a one-sentence tweet: “Never forget that the prosecutor of the Gülenist movement, Hadi Salihoğlu, had decided not to prosecute the December 17 corruption investigation.” So, they raided my house early one morning, confiscated my mobile phone, my computer, my 5-year-old son’s iPad and detained me. Since I made the police wait for a short while in front of the door, the police also brought a separate public lawsuit against me alleging “insulting and resisting the police”. In total, they wanted to sentence me to more than 10 years of imprisonment. I was acquitted in the first hearing of these cases.

A woman looks out of her window behind a banner of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, following Erdoğan’s speech at a rally of hisruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) in Istanbul, Tuesday, March5, 2019, ahead of local elections scheduled for March 31, 2019.

When Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was running for president in the 2018 general elections, I wrote a tweet “We don’t want a president without a diploma, but more importantly, we don’t want a dishonest President.” I was once again taken to court on the charge of insulting the president. I denied the defamation charge because a four-year college degree was a constitutional requirement for the presidential candidacy. And no such diploma existed that Erdoğan could provide. His diploma(s) presented in the press were regarded as fake. Moreover, no official statement was made in this regard. I was handed a nine-month and 20 daysprison sentence, which I have appealed. The final judgement has not been spoken yet, the trial continues.

On April 21, 2021, during the live broadcast of the AKP party meeting, President Erdoğan publicly targeted me: “The ’Where are the 128 billion dollars?’ question is a big lie and this woman told CHP to parrot this lie!” Images taken from my TEDx talk titled “It Is The Brains That Are Being Conquered, Not Lands”’ were deliberately distorted and then montaged together with the well-known quote of Hitler’s propaganda minister Goebbels, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”, as if the words belonged to me. This time, I was the one who brought a case to court. I filed a lawsuit against President Erdoğan demanding 128 cents in compensation. Needless to say, at first we had difficulty in finding a prosecutor and then we were faced with an immediate “non-prosecution” decision. If necessary, we are determined to carry it up to the European Court of Human Rights, in order to set a precedent.

They ultimately incarcerated me under the pretext of insult through a proverb I used. Long story short, they say “SHUT UP!”

This trial, which is now known as the “Sedef Kabaş Case” in Turkey’s political and legal history, actually served as a litmus paper for our dying democracy, our judicial system, which has been turned into an apparatus of the government and our media, whose voice is getting weaker. What had been obvious has now become blatant. Journalists are being abandoned in the face of oppression by a fascist government. Maybe for the first time different segments of the society met on a common ground through which a stronger resistance could be put forward. Social media posts managed to keep the issue on the agenda for 50 consecutive days and to create public pressure. The strategy of arresting and silencing the “impudent” female journalist, as the government was intimating, backfired. Taking a journalist into custody at midnight because of a proverb she used in a live broadcast one week before, remanding her despite the lack of suspicion of escape and of spoliation, incarcerating her for 49 days and demanding her to serve 12 years and 10 months in prison was found excessive even by those who usually prefer to stay silent or to turn a blind eye. Had this woman committed murder, traded drugs, or been a member of a terrorist organization? Wait a minute!

We don’t want a president without a diploma, but more importantly, we don’t want a dishonest President.

In today’s Turkey, 95 percent of the media is structurally, economically and politically pro-government, that is, they comprise only spokespeople of the government. Their only mission is to make news that will perpetuate the power of the current government. In this respect, issues such as freedom of the press, the imperative of the journalist to be an opponent, to be the checks and balances of the government and the fifth column for the state is completely out of the question. The rest of the media, which are considered as “opposition”, are far from taking a consistent and determined stance in protecting their own rights or their members for fear of reprisal.

Another reality, which has become very clear, is that when Erdoğan utters the words, “She will pay the price for this”; the laws, the Constitution, the decisions of the ECHR, the ministry of justice, judges, prosecutors and lawyers become redundant and invalid. In the current state, the government is trying to turn the judiciary into an instrument against dissent. It has become the larger crime to declare theft, rather than to commit the act itself. On the television screens, politicians claim that the judiciary is independent; however, as it can be seen in my case, this does not prevent the Minister of Justice from making a de facto verdict “She will receive the punishment she deserves” even though my given statement to the police had not even been finalized. This single-handed administration recognizes no rights, no laws and no justice or the separation of powers to keep them accountable.

Another issue that has become very clear is that a journalist, who has no power other than that of his word and pen, is seen by the current government as more dangerous than an entire enemy army.

All in all I write this piece as a journalist, who was scapegoated overnight as a “terrorist”, “traitor”, “spy”, as “impudent”, “shameless”, who was sentenced to prison for two years and four months and on top being sued by Erdoğan for damages. Look at me, I’m still writing… while I am walking on a minefield, at the risk of another blowout that might be caused by another article or tweet, or by another comment that I make… And I do so, sincerely believing that the truth-saying, spirited journalist of a new era could play a key role in achieving better, more just, more prosperous days for my country…

The ox and the palace

In January, Turkish journalist Sedef Kabaş was detained and her house was raided following a statement she made in a television talk show. Because she used the proverb “When an ox enters into a palace, it does not become king. Rather the palace becomes a stable”, Kabaş was taken to court on the charge of insulting president Erdoğan. After spending 50 days in jail, she was released from police custody. The decision about her having to actually serve the 28-month prison sentence is still pending. Meanwhile Kabaş continues to publish on her YouTube channel.