Fréderike Geerdink
Zero surprise of course, that the owner of X, formerly Twitter, suspended the account of MedyaHaber TV. The so-called champion of free speech is no champion of free speech at all, we knew that. He has no clue in all his evilness. But that the suspension is no surprise, doesn’t mean it’s not infuriating. Without Kurdish media, we would be in the dark.
Let me tell you about the very moment I woke up to how good Kurdish media is. It must have been in 2011, when I lived and worked in Istanbul but travelled to Amed (Diyarbakir) and other Kurdish cities regularly to report. I was visiting a conference weekend on the history of the Amed region from a multicultural perspective. During the conference, I heard that there was a funeral of a PKK fighter. As I had never seen that, I decided to leave to conference for a couple of hours.
Teargas
It started at a mosque. It was busy, there were banners and slogans. After the ceremony at the mosque, the crowd would walk to the cemetery. Police were standing at the end of the street and I felt the tension looming in the air. Some police officers talked to one or two Kurdish MPs who were present, and the latter asked the crowd to stop the slogans and lower the banners. The crowd instantly obeyed. Tension seemed to wind down, but suddenly, the police started to shoot teargas. Without any reason whatsoever, they started to shoot teargas.
I was flabbergasted – as the only one there, I suppose. I did follow Kurdish media, but I wasn’t always sure what to think of their reporting. Their reporting seemed so… unreal sometimes. But now, I saw with my own eyes that unreal events were actually real in Kurdistan. The report I read the next day in a Kurdish paper about the funeral, was very accurate. The police had just started to shoot teargas, unprovoked, at a funeral of a PKK fighter. Really? Really.
Newroz
In all the years that I have reported from Kurdistan after that, and especially in the years that I lived and worked in Amed, between 2012 and 2015, I attended many news events on which Kurdish media reported too. Regular stuff that many media report, like elections and Newroz celebrations, but also less regular stuff like the opening of a PKK graveyard, commemorations of the Roboski massacre, or a gathering in front of Diyarbakir prison when a long-term hunger strike of political prisoners was ending. And every time I checked, the reports in Kurdish media were accurate.
That this surprised me says a lot about the kind of journalist I was. Reporting on a marginalised group, not from their perspective but from the established perspective. Or, more accurately: from the privileged perspective. I have been educated and trained as a journalist in the Netherlands, as a white woman. Honesty demands that one of the reasons I left the Netherlands and started freelancing in Turkey, was that I thought there were not so many important stories to tell anymore in the Netherlands. In retrospect, I know I was blinded by my own whiteness.
Social change
The more I reported on Kurds, the more I was confronted with my privileged perspective. It wasn’t good for my journalism. The role of a journalist in society is – as I had learned – to be an ‘objective observer’, but I started to profoundly see that that was not a desirable position, and not even a possible one. It’s not objectivity what we need, but truth, facts and honesty. My position changed. I have read a lot ever since on ‘role perceptions’ of journalists, and I know now that I transitioned from being this impossible ‘objective observer’ to being an ‘advocate for social change’. That’s a perfectly legitimate position as a journalist.
It’s okay to take a stance, if it’s based on knowledge and facts. It’s okay to speak out, especially when it comes to the position of groups in society that have no institutional power. Don’t they know the workings of power the best? And isn’t it, after all, journalism’s promise to hold power to account?
It took me some time to feel comfortable in this new position, especially because I do want to keep working for established media. One of the reasons is that my access to a wide range of media gives me the opportunity to report from a marginalised perspective without preaching to the choir. It’s a struggle sometimes, because I only keep this access if my journalism adheres to the standards of staff journalists who often do still see themselves as ‘objective observers’. They may see me as ‘activist’ – for the majority of them, ‘advocate for social change’ is not a legitimate position. Or they have never really given this much thought, like I hadn’t.
Balancing act
This is, I have to admit, still a balancing act. I have been writing this column for Medya News since the summer of 2020, when this wonderful news portal started. I love writing the columns, it’s a great way to think about developments in Kurdistan and formulate an opinion about it. But sometimes, I am afraid that the established media I work for see it as too activist and judge me for it. While, I should only be proud to work for Medya News, which is part of a journalistic tradition in Kurdistan from which western media could learn a lot.
Without Kurdish media, I would still have been in the dark about what my role as a journalist ultimately is. And without Kurdish media, we would all be in the dark about the daily realities in Kurdistan. Really? Really.
Fréderike Geerdink is an independent journalist. Follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her acclaimed weekly newsletter Expert Kurdistan.
