‘Please don’t drop Turkey’

Frankfurt am Main – Thinking back to his months in an Istanbul prison last year, Turkish journalist Can Dundar recalls a fellow inmate asking a guard for a book from the prison library.

“We don’t have the book, but we have the author,” came the reply.

The anecdote, told with a wry smile during a roundtable discussion at the Frankfurt book fair, exemplifies Turkey’s crackdown on freedom of expression in the wake of last year’s failed coup.

Among the more than 50 000 people arrested since then are about 180 journalists, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has faced fierce criticism from the West for the repression.

But Dundar – seated next to celebrated Turkish novelist Asli Erdogan, herself held for four months on “terror propaganda” charges – urged European governments not to turn their backs on Turkey as the rift with Erdogan widens.

“Isolating Turkey means supporting Erdogan, not us,” Dundar told the audience. “Pushing Turkey to Russia and Iran is not a smart idea.”

Millions of Turks voted against granting Erdogan getting sweeping new powers in last April’s controversial referendum, he added. And recent opinion polls had shown a drop in support for the Turkish leader, who first came to power in 2002.

“At least half the country is resisting, suffering and struggling at the same time,” the former editor-in-chief of the Cumhuriyet opposition newspaper said.

The roundtable talk was one of a series of events at the book fair, the publishing industry’s top annual showcase, to shine a spotlight on press freedom in Turkey.

Earlier this week, jailed Turkish investigative reporter Ahmet Sik received an award in absentia for courageous journalism.

Supporters of Germany’s Die Welt correspondent Deniz Yucel called for his release under the banner #FreeDeniz.

Award-winning novelist Burhan Sonmez, the third participant in Thursday’s discussion in Frankfurt, said he had recently returned to Istanbul after spending a decade in Britain. He said dissenting voices live under a cloud of fear in Turkey.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen the next morning. You could be at work or in prison,” he said.

But it’s also what spurred him on. “You have to speak, you have to write. Because you could be next.” –