HUMAN RIGHTS-TURKEY: ‘Jailed For Professionalism’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ertugrul Kurkcu

ISTANBUL, Dec 13 1996 (IPS) - Turkish journalist Isik Yurtcu is paying for his professionalism with a jail sentence that will keep him behind bars into the next century. But that has not prevented him from becoming the country’s most honoured ‘gentleman of the press’.

On Wednesday he added the Paris based media rights organisation Reporters Sans Frontieres’ (RSF) Journalist Of The Year title to his collection of honours. Only last month he won the same accolade from the New York based Committee for the Protection of Journalists.

In a faxed message to IPS in Istanbul said he was “of course extremely satisfied” to receive the RSF award. “But,” he added, “I accept it as an international gesture of support for the wider cause of freedom of expression in Turkey. In a country where freedom of expression does not exist, no other freedom can be enjoyed.”

IPS Istanbul correspondent Nadire Mater, travelled to Paris Wednesday to collect the prize on his behalf.

The staff of Yurtcu’s paper, the now banned pro-Kurdish daily Ozgur Gundem, were regular targets of bombers and assassination squads.

The award gathering was told that Yurtcu said he still felt the dying breaths of murdered colleagues as he “received this honorable prize” — victims Recai Unal, Metin Goktepe, Abdi Ipekci, Ugur Mumcu, Hafiz Akdemir, Musa Anter, Cetin Emec, Turna Dursun, Huseyin Deniz, Izzet Kezer, Nazim Babaoglu and Ferhat Tepe.

The paper, banned in January 1994, sympathised with Turkish Kurd calls for regional autonomy, a stance that brought them literally under fire from government supporters. Ankara’s security forces have battled the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) since 1984 in a war that has claimed some 22,000 lives and forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.

His prize is expected to delivered to him in north western Turkey’s Sakarya Prison on Sunday. The honour also carries a cash award of 50,000 francs (9,700 dollars).

Yurtcu, 52, a Turk, not a Kurd, has been held in jail for two years. The paper’s managing editor, he was sentenced to eight years in jail as the legally declared ‘responsible’, after collective breaches of various laws preventing advocacy of ‘separatism’, from the paper’s first issue in June 1991 up to the moment it was finally banned in January 1994. Yurtcu was also fined a total of 10,000 dollars. Failure to pay will earn him another three years in prison.

Even when he does get out, under present Turkish law he will not be allowed to resume his chair; convicted people are prohibited from taking up the ‘responsible’ mantle at Turkish newspapers.

Born in the southern city of Adana, son of a veteran journalist, Yurtcu started work in the daily media while a law student. He quit his studies for a full time job with Ankara’s daily Yenigun in 1969 and in years of senior level journalism thereafter always worked with papers challenging the Turkish establishment.

He has frequently tangled with the authorities since 1971, and was detained briefly as a member of the executive committee of a journalist’ union associated with a leftist labour confederation after the 1980 military takeover.

His professional awards at home include honours from the Turkish Press Council, Turkish Journalists’ Association, Contemporary Journalist Association and the Turkish Journalists’ Union. He is also an honorary member of the Writers’ Union of Turkey.

All those who worked for him cited his traditional journalistic qualities and professional skills in explaining Reporters Sans Frontieres’ decision to launch a global effort to free him in 1994 and again to honour him in 1996.

“We are determined to continue the campaign until Isik is freed,” RSF secretary-general Robert Menard told IPS this week. A series of RSF adverts in the French daily paper Liberation features Yurtcu’s image; as the days progress it is darkened out to symbolise the worsening media rights situation in Turkey.

Like other threatened journalists championed by RSF, Yurtcu has been ‘adopted’ by senior French reporters who take a close public interest in his case; Marie-Guy Baron, a French journalist at the daily Le Figaro and Dominique Bromberger of Franco-German Arte TV.

“I attempted to meet Isik in Sakarya Prison, however I was unable to get permission from the Turkish Ministry of Justice,” said Baron. “I could send him a box of chocolates,” she added. “Yet, I will continue campaigning for his release.”

IPS correspondent Nadire Mater, who also represents Reporters Sans Frontieres in Turkey, noted that Turkish journalists had failed to show the same level of support for Yurtcu as their French colleagues, but said the situation was changing.

“But even if delayed, attention in the domestic media and among Turkish journalists for Isik’s case is in the increase,” Mater said. “Reporters Sans Frontiers is now closer to its aim: Freeing Yurtcu.”

Claudia Roth, leader of the Green group of members of the European Parliament has taken a lead in bringing Yurtcu’s case to the attention of Turkish media chiefs.

Reporters Sans Frontiers is also calling for the release of six other jailed journalists: Naile Tuncer, Salih Bal, Emine Buyrukcan, Guray Ulku, Alper Gormus and Muteber Yildirim.

It also calls for the repeal of article eight of the country’s anti-terrorism law and article 312 of the Turkish Penal Code, under which at least 3,000 Turkish journalists, writers and authors have been tried.