Even in exile, dream of freedom endures
Targeted by Erdogan, Turkish judge recalls Hub visit
His email arrived on the Fourth of July — a day etched in his memory. He remembers the barbecue and the fireworks, the red, white and blueness of it all, the safety and security of it all.
But now as he sees his own country lose its once-steady grip on democracy, he remembers the true meaning of the day.
“Fourth of July, impossible for me to forget. It means independence and freedom!!!!” he writes, and in those words — and the four exclamation marks — are all the pain and all the hope.
I will call him Murat — a common enough Turkish name — although his real name and those of his family will remain sealed away in my heart.
Once he was a judge in Turkey — a rising star — sent here to improve his English and to get an advanced degree. He was doing his thesis on freedom of the press and so he visited my office on several occasions, often to meet with other international visitors and journalists.
His July Fourth note recalled the selfie we took in my office — in front of a photo of a very young me interviewing a very young U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy. “I have it still,” he wrote. It seems like a thousand years ago that we took that selfie. It was long before the aborted coup in Turkey just one year ago, before President Recep Tayyip Erdogan began rounding up judges and prosecutors, journalists and civil servants. Before the descent into autocracy, and the chaos of lives turned upside down.
We kept in touch during the happy times when he returned to Turkey. And then during the not-so-happy times when there were reports via friends.
Murat was OK, they insisted. The family was OK. They escaped before he could be arrested, but with little more than the clothes on their backs. Today they remain in a refugee camp in Europe, Murat hoping for perhaps a university position — something that will allow him to support his family, to get out of the camp.
But on this day of remembering he is more concerned about the well- being of a friend he left behind — and this is so like Murat — a friend who is not doing so well.
And his real name I will use because, well, the world needs to know it and he may have little time left.
“Justice Mithat Ozcan lost one lung to cancer,” Murat writes. He has been in jail for months — one of thousands, yes, but one who served his country and now is in peril.
“Doctor reports say he has to be released,” Murat writes, “but the court still holds him in jail.”
The stories are as many and varied as there are people who were once living lives of quiet respectability, now fearing the knock at the door — unless the knock has already come.
Another judge now seeking asylum here is among the lucky ones — but lucky is a relative thing. His wife, a civil servant back in Turkey, was told her arrest was imminent. She has gone into hiding. During a recent visit to Boston he tells of a former colleague back home. “He was a judge. He was respected. Now he can’t buy diapers for his baby. He cannot work. His property has been seized.” Such is life under the Erdogan regime. Such is life in what used to be a model Muslim democracy. The fig leaf of some grand conspiracy organized by an exiled cleric now living in Pennsylvania has long since been exposed for what it is — a pretext for the steady erosion of the rule of law. Last week there was a report that another 780 judges and prosecutors would be “replaced.” And, of course, the regime’s assault on the media continues unabated. But last week there was also a glimmer of hope — at least hope that as world leaders, including Erdogan, descended on Germany that the world would acknowledge the gulag that Turkey has become. Even as the G-20 opened last Thursday, the European Parliament passed a resolution acknowledging a report by its own special commission on Turkey, which had once aspired to EU membership.
The commission noted its concern “that judges and prosecutors continue to come under strong political pressure and that as many as 4,000, which is close to one fourth of all judges and prosecutors, [the number already outdated] have been dismissed or arrested and in some cases their properties have been confiscated.” The resolution called on Turkey to restore “full respect for the independence of the judiciary.”
Frankly we’re not holding our breath on that score. But Murat and his former colleagues need to know the world has not forgotten, that July Fourth means more than fireworks. It means standing up for principles on the world stage — like justice and the rule of law, even when that’s inconvenient.