NUR EREN KILINÇ/ a graduate of Atatürk University, Faculty of Communication, was the political news editor of Yeni Asya newspaper. She was arrested on March 1, 2017 as a journalist with a yellow press card in Turkey. She was released on 21 February 2018 after given a sentence of 7 years and 6 months in
prison and house arrest. While in prison, her book “Three Branch of Daisies”, consisting of letters from people in prison, was published by the Yeni Asya Press. She appeared in court again on charges that the book was a ‘propaganda of the terrorist organization.” The journalist was forced to flee to Germany due to unending pressures.
According to the renowned stipulation of Winston Churchill, “Democracy means that when there’s a knock in the door at 3 am, it’s probably the milkman.”
When I came across with the knock on the door, I was a 25 years old journalist and the year was 2017. On that day I had left my work by the end of my shift and I was having a sweet walk on the streets dreaming about my wedding which was two months away. I came home around 7 pm and started working
on my story that covers July 15 Coup Theatre, penned and directed by the homegrown dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. I was tired but I had to keep working because the messages that were flooding my mailbox were blowing my mind. I was losing my sleep. The families of 18 year-old military students who were put in prison with the accusation that they were the ones behind the coup attempt and the next-of-kins of the teachers and doctors who were declared traitors overnight were sending hundreds of e-mails to journalists like me. I was working through these e-mails and getting the necessary court documents to prepare a book on them.
I had two options: I would either ignore the messages and avoid political reporting or would I write the truth whatever cost follows through. The latter was needed from me as a human and then a journalist.
THE FIRST TARGET OF THE POLICE WAS MY BOOKS
A report I put together under the title of “The oppression of State of Emergency Surpassed that of February 28” was published in the subheading of the daily that I worked back in the time. Erdoğan’s trolls on social media started throwing in lots of threats after this publication. There were a lot of threat messages in my mailbox but my heart was still going to the innocent people who were dehumanized and imprisoned through baseless accusations.
I had fallen asleep with such thoughts on my mind that I was startled with the noise that someone was hammering my door. They were yelling as they hammered my wooden door. No, it could not be the milkman. As I opened the door, 8 male police officers flooded into my house which was not more than 40 square meters. As they did not even allow me to put something on, they raided into my books. It was outrageous and scary. They were going through my about 400 books and handwritten mails. No, they were battering them to carve out anything to support that I was a terrorist. The scenery reminded my a saying by Alberto Manguel, “from among all the things that were invented by humans, the books are the biggest enemies of dictators”.
A FORM OF TORTURE: STRIPSEARCH
I threw in one last glance at my home and my preparations for my wedding both were looted when I was being dragged out among 8 male police officers. The violence that manifested through the behaviour of the police was a small reflection of dictator’s wrath. At that moment I came to realize that I was not
even going to be able to say goodbye to my azaleas and my flower-hearted mom who was waiting for my return.
My journey that started that night continued with my detention in the police station and I was finally put in Istanbul Bakırköy prison. I did not know what was going to happen after I got registered in. In a small room, I was stripsearched by some women guards who were gossiping and laughing non-stop. When I was located in my ward I came to realize that it was not just me who has gone through this torture of stripsearch. The prisoner next ward,
Ö.N., who was a dismissed judge and with whom I spoke yelling through the windows would tell me that she has gone through it multiple times.
After my days in that cell were over, I was taken to a ward for 30 people. The things that heard in that ward were shocking, or rather jaw-dropping. My mind still goes to that judge, Ö.N.
WHAT DO THEY WANT FROM THOSE BABIES?
Being a political prisoner was the thoughest residence in the jail. At the beginning of the shift that started with the first daylight, the criminal offenders would go out to sports hall, library or painting courses. Their laughters would echo in the corridors of the prison. For political prisoners, like myself, such activities were prohibited. Unfortunately, the babies were subject to such limitations as well. No, you did not misread it. While the babies of criminal offenders had the right to attent to the kindergarten, the babies of our ward were prohibited from going out. While the voices of the children who go to kindergarden enlightened the prison, I was busy running from the questions of my five-year-old best friend, S., who was asking why she was not allowed to go to kindergarden. “Who are those children? Why can’t I play with them? Being exposed to those questions was more difficult to stand than all the tortures and rights violations.
A “CRIMINAL” WHO CANNOT EVEN GO TO BATHROOM ON HER OWN
Another issue that has given me tough time was the sick and elderly inmates in my ward. I will never forget the silent sobbings of F., who was an Alzheimer’s patient and used to ask for her grandchildren. After some years, her voice is still in my ears and the nightmare that I still have. Due to the diseases and defficiencies that she had at her hands, belly and heart, she was having hard time going to bathroom on her own. At times, she would fall in the bathroom and the other inmates would help her out. What did Erdoğan want from that woman who could not go to bathroom, write her own defence? What was the role of this woman in Erdoğan’s coup theatre? The only crime that she committed was working at a quran course on a voluntary basis and cooking for the
poor children.
MY SPRING IN A PARSLEY, MY PATIENCE
I was trying to create petite beauties to open space and breathe better for my self and the other inmates. The days were heavy for all of us. I used to order parsley from the prison store, put in in vase that I cut out of a plastic bottle and watch those small gren leaves.
With those gren leaves, I was in love. Looking at the parsley would give me a lot of joy in this rather soilless, colorless and torturous place as if I was looking at azaleas and violets, that is untill a guard noticed my parsley. The guard would crush my plastic bottlemade-into-vase in her dirty hands would tell me; “parsley is sold for eating purposes, you can’t keep it here” with her dirty heart.
These people could not stand the hope that reflected through the green of the parsley and this is why whatever they represented was doomed to lose.
ERDOĞAN’S POISON: HIS MEDIA ARMY
After an imprisonment of 357 days, I had served my time for 7 years and 6 months that I was sentenced to. I was released with all the traces of torture on my mind and heart. Upon my firt step out, I had cried; “I am outside that door now but there are babies and elderly women in those wards. I will be happy once they are all released.” Leaving those babies and elderly women to the mercy of the guards who cannot stand the green of the parsley was a saddening feeling.
When it is about Turkey, rights violations and Erdoğan the dictator, I have a lot to say and write. It has been 5 years after the July 15 coup theater staged by Erdoğan and my ensuing imprisonment.
What happened then, in this 5 years? According to the rankings and evaluations of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Turkey has become the largest prison for journalists in which Erdoğan established his army of media and retained his determination with the power that he derived from the people that he poisoned. At this point, let’s remember what Ray Bradbury said in his Fahrenheit 451: ”You can stop the books and shut them down for a while. But once the television sowed a seed in the room that it is, has there been anyone that freed herself from its claws?”
I end my words with my wishes of freedom to those babies, sick and elderly inmates who are trying to survive in Erdoğan’s Turkey