United in suffering

Journalism forms the fortresses protecting the borders of a society’s freedom of thought; once those fortresses have fallen it means that freedom of thought has come under attack by barbarians.
 
Without journalists, without those fortresses and border guards, finding someone to protect freedom of thought against barbarianism is no easy task.
 
I have enough years and experience behind me to know that freedom of thought is not a concept to which society in Turkey gives great importance.
 
As Sartre said, the lack of freedom of thought in society comes not when ideas are not expressed, but when there are no ideas to be expressed.
 
For centuries this society has been afraid of new ideas; it is a timid society that shies away from new inventions and that is terrified of thinking.
 
We live in a society that is not afraid of killing another human being, but that is terrified of expressing a new idea that might anger the powers that be.
 
As it has few original thoughts, the concept of “freedom of thought” is foreign to this society and even an object of derision.
 
Our society does not even realise it needs freedom of thought.
 
It is a society unable to understand why it never seems to develop or prosper, unaware of the fact that without this freedom it will never develop and prosper.
 
It is a country unable to understand why it does not develop, why it constantly finds itself led by oppressive politicians who are the subject of ridicule around the world, why leaders change but the form of regime always stays the same.
 
It is unable to understand the importance of freedom of thought.
 
But the fact that society does not understand it does not lessen its importance.
 
Just as someone who is not aware that oxygen is needed to purify the blood running through his body cannot live without breathing, a society that does not understand the importance of freedom of thought cannot survive without that freedom.
 
When its oxygen supply is cut off it starts to struggle.
 
Of course the life – and death – of a society lasts longer than that that of an individual, and Turkey has been struggling to breathe for a long time, unable to save itself from chaos, disaster, bloodshed.
 
It is a society whose oxygen supply – a supply of whose unimportance it is unaware – has been cut off, a society in which the borderlines of freedom of thought have been torn down, a society whose realms of freedom are under occupation.
 
With each breath it takes it will begin to understand how important this oxygen is and how much it needs it.
 
And as freedom of thought develops it will also understand its need for this freedom.
 
Freedom of thought is society’s oxygen, and those who choose to target journalists – the “border guards” who protect freedom of thought – know that this is the first and most important step towards destroying that freedom, cutting off society’s oxygen supply, silencing it and making it wither and die.
 
This is why they are the first target of every regime, every system, every government.
 
In the single-party era they were thrown into prison or killed.
 
After promising to bring “democracy” when came into power, the Democrat Party started to arrest journalists, towards the end of its rule. So many journalists were imprisoned that the prison in Ankara became known as the “Ankara Hilton”.
 
Journalists were again targeted during the rule of the Justice Party.
 
Journalists were also rounded up by each of the military regimes that followed.
 
The AKP promised to destroy the “military tutelage” and establish democracy, but now that they are sure that the reins of power are firmly in their hands, they too are attacking journalists.
They seem to be attacking journalists and freedom of thought more fiercely than any other regime.
 
The last great offensive began with the arrest of Mehmet Baransu.
 
After this they arrested Hidayet Karaca and Gültekin Avcı, as well as Cevheri Güven and Murat Çapan of the satirical magazine Nokta Dergisi.
 
Meanwhile so many Kurdish journalists have been thrown in jail that we cannot even keep track of all their names.
 
Most recently they sent the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet, Can Dündar, and the newspaper’s Ankara representative Erdem Gül to the high-security prison in Silivri.
 
What sets the AKP government apart from other regimes is that it accuses journalists of “spying” and “membership of an armed terrorist organisation”, and that there are courts willing to take such accusations seriously.
 
I believe that we are facing the harshest attack since the Law for the Maintenance of Order (Takrir-i Sükûn[KF1] ).
 
They are attacking with a recklessness and frenzy not even seen under military rule.
 
One of the main reasons for this is that they are scared almost out of their minds.
 
They have committed so many crimes that, should they be tried in a free country, they would never get away with it, and so they are trying to destroy the border guards of freedom and establish a barbarian occupation.
 
While doing so they are consciously trying to overturn the naturally established hierarchy within the world of journalism: They accuse well-respected, experienced journalists with meaningless crimes such as “espionage” and put people with a dubious background in journalism in the place of the “accuser”, aiming to make them the most important figures in journalism.
 
This is an almost impossible task; there is no way for them to achieve this aim.
 
Societies such as ours may not have the most developed of ideas, but what they do have is an intuition that tells them who people really are, and even if they are afraid of expressing it, this intuition is still there.
 
This aim cannot be achieved, but by throwing journalists in jail they are succeeding in suffocating society.
 
So what do we do against this vicious attack?
 
First of all, must stop weeping at the foot of the ruins of “our” fortresses, and respond to these collective attacks with collective resistance.
 
To do so we must protect the rights of all, without distinguishing between a Kurdish journalist and Hidayet Karaca, between Mehmet Baransu and Can Dündar, between Cevheri Güven and Erdem Gül.
 
We must not forget that a society's freedom of thought is protected not by just one fortress; along the borders of that freedom stand various fortresses, each as important as the next.
 
Turkey and those who live in the country are facing a brutal attack. We must join forces against these barbarians who commit their crimes openly while attempting to build a wall of silence so they can raid the treasury to their heart’s content.
 
By defending all our colleagues with the same strength and conviction, we also defend those fortresses and therefore our country.
 
Is this something we can do?
 
If not there will be little to set us apart from the barbarians.
 
The only difference: we will be defeated barbarians.