Newsflash! Governing party AKP is about to change the infamous penal code article 301! Many papers put it on the front page and the press outside Turkey also picked up the story. I recall how last December the same news was spread around. I rushed to write an article on how different human rights activists …
Yesterday, there was a trial in Ankara concerning article 301, the infamous Penal Code Article on ‘insulting Turkishness’. Thursday there’s one in Istanbul, Friday in Iskenderun. I get an update on trials that concern ‘freedom of expression’ every week. The trials are not only about 301, but also about other articles that are misused to limit the freedom of expression. …
The European Union will be happy: finally Turkey will change article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code – at least the proposed change has been announced. Article 301 makes it illegal to insult ‘Turkishness’, and many journalists, writers and publishers have been brought to court for violating this article – when in fact all they did was express their opinion. …
Three weeks ago, Festos Okey died. A man from Nigeria, asylum seeker in Turkey and shot at Beyoglu police station in Istanbul. How he died is being investigated now. The police say he was taken into custody after they found drugs on him as they checked his identity, and that Festos tried to snatch a gun from a policeman when …
Sometimes, when I’m on a boat on the Bosphorus, I want to litterally scream. Scream because of the happiness working in this city and in this country gives me. A few days ago, I felt it again. I came back from an interview with Cetin Altan and Solmaz Kamuran, married and both writers. The interview was about publishing in Turkey, and how (un)free writers and publishers are in Turkey. Altan’s writing carreer is long: 60 years already. He is 80 years old now, but is everything but finished with writing. Besides books, he published essay’s and is still regularly writing columns for Milliyet newspaper. His wife Solmaz Kamuran writes novels and is a translater.
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