Fréderike Geerdink
The situation of journalists and journalism in Kurdistan is dire, that much became clear on World Press Freedom Day, 3 May. The situation has not improved in any of the countries that occupy the Kurdish homeland. But the journalists who rarely get mentioned related to press freedom, are the ones who are in exile. One of them passed away on exactly 3 May: Celal Başlangıç. He died without seeing his city, Istanbul, or his country again.
Celal Başlangıç went into exile in Germany after the failed military coup in Turkey during the summer of 2016. He was one of the founders of the news portal Artı Gerçek, an effort he made after dedicating many decades of his life to journalism in Turkey. He was one of the few Turkish journalists to consistently report on Kurdish issues, already in the late 1980s.
Başlangıç was very principled in standing up for the truth to come out. One of his most famous stories was on villagers in Şırnak who were forced to eat human faeces by Turkish security forces.
Initially, the paper Başlangıç worked for, the staunchly secularist Cumhuriyet that was not very open-minded about the realities of Kurdistan, refused to print it, but he insisted: he would step down if the story was not printed. It eventually landed on the front page.
Audience
What Başlangıç did perfectly, was use the credit that he had with the public and the state as a Turkish journalist working for established media. If a Kurdish journalist would run such a story, only Kurds would hear about it. If Başlangıç wrote it, it would reach a much larger audience, and an audience that wouldn’t trust the reporting of a Kurdish journalist but would not so easily shove aside the truth if it came from somebody within their own circle. Başlangıç, we would say now, in 2024, exercised his privilege excellently.
I don’t think I ever met him in Turkey, but I did in Amsterdam, after he went into exile. There was a panel in December 2017 about journalism and press freedom in Turkey and both he and I were speakers, alongside Fehim Işık and Ragıp Duran, and two Dutch politicians.
Afterwards, when we were having a drink, the difficult step of going into exile was discussed. The journalists said that even though they had been prosecuted, censored and even imprisoned in Turkey for their work, they had never considered leaving the country in the 1980s and 1990s. But now, especially after the failed coup in 2016, the pressure just became unbearable.
Heart
For me, the situation was different, of course. Turkey threw me out because of my journalism about the Kurds in September 2015 but I had a country to safely return to. I still long to go back to Bakur (Kurdistan in Turkey) but I’m not in exile. Or..? I was shaped as a journalist and as a human being in Kurdistan in a very profound way and I did leave my heart there – let’s say, exile light.
Celal Başlangıç was safe in Germany too. No risk of being locked up in prison again for his work, no risk of being prosecuted, no risk of being censored. Artı Gerçek was, and is, thriving. But the people he wrote about – and about whom also Fehim Işık and Ragıp Duran wrote, and me, for that matter – they were and are not safe.
For the Kurds, every journalist who is forced to leave, means having one set of eyes less watching them and sharing their realities with the world. In the case of journalists like Başlangıç: two dedicated and privileged eyes less. One pen less to produce words the world assigns credibility too. One camera less, one microphone less to speak to while knowing that your words will extend beyond your own community.
Partisan
This is connected to another problem too, something the journalistic community needs to fix: we need to give more trust to journalists reporting on their own communities. Kurdish journalists in Kurdistan, Palestinian journalists in Palestine – you know what I mean.
Journalists need access to where the stories are (which is literally everywhere), but local journalists should not be automatically seen as partisan, and the privileged journalists from outside as ‘objective’, as is often the case now.
For the privileged ones, it takes time to build the necessary trust and get to know the communities they write about, while the locals bring that to their work in a natural way.
No longer being able to share the stories is a huge pain for journalists in exile. Many do find a way, like the excellent journalists, including Başlangıç, with whom I shared a panel that afternoon in Amsterdam. But it will always be second best. What every journalist wants, is to be on the ground with their feet in the mud. Leaving the story behind is the worst. The safety in exile is bitter.
And now Celal Başlangıç has lost his life. A loss for journalism. A loss for the Kurds. A very, very sad loss for him, to be laid to rest in exile without ever seeing his city and his country again. Rest in peace, colleague.
Fréderike Geerdink is an independent journalist. Follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her acclaimed weekly newsletter Expert Kurdistan
