Hasan Cemal, a prominent veteran journalist in Turkey, announced on Monday that he is quitting his 54-year-long career to run as a People’s Democratic Party (HDP) candidate in the country’s 14 May elections.
The pro-Kurdish HDP faces a threat of closure by the country’s constitutional court ahead of elections but has mitigated this by nominating candidates from the Green Left Party for the upcoming polls.
“Turkey today is a country of crisis. It is a country that experiences downfall and decay. It is a country that awaits rebuilding, peace and democracy, the rule of law and justice, freedom and prosperity. In order to shoulder this responsibility, I am entering politics as a parliamentary candidate for the Green Left Party,” Cemal wrote in his last column he penned for T-24 news site.
If elected, the 79-year old Cemal will likely be chosen to open the new Turkish parliament. According to rules in Turkey, the eldest member of parliament opens the first session after elections and holds this responsibility until parliament chooses the new speaker.
Hasan Cemal is no ordinary name, and not only for his long and bright career in journalism. He is the grandson of Cemal Pasha, one of the top leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress who ruled the Ottoman Empire during the World War I. Cemal Pasha is also known for his responsibility in decisions that led to the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915.
However, Cemal Pasha’s grandson made an apology to all Armenians for the events of 1915 and wrote a book titled “1915: The Armenian Genocide” in which he also narrated his personal transformation on the issue.
During a visit to Armenia in 2011, Hasan Cemal met with Armen Gevorkyan, grandson of Artashes Gevorgyan and the man who assassinated his grandfather in 1922.
Cemal has contributed to efforts for a peaceful solution of Turkey’s decades long Kurdish question.
In addition to numerous articles on the issue, in 2004 he also penned a book entitled “The Kurds” in an effort to explain to people in Turkey the aim of the latest Kurdish insurgence that began in the country’s southeast in 1984.
In 2011, he published another book on the subject, entitled “Trust Yourselves in Peace: A New Perspective on the Kurdish Issue”.
During the early years of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Cemal was very close to the then-prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who called the journalist “older brother”. Cemal supported the AKP’s reforms for democratisation and its efforts to launch a peace process to solve the Kurdish issue.
However, as Erdoğan became more and more autocratic, Cemal began to criticise him. In 2013 Cemal left Milliyet, as the newspaper declined to publish one of his columns after Erdoğan targeted the journalist, saying “down with your journalism”.
