It was an obvious decision to devote this Dissident Blog to Turkey. Since July 2016 we have seen a steady stream of writers, publishers and journalists, as well as teachers, academics and others opposing the government, being arrested on unclear and false grounds and put in prison. The dismantling of free expression and free press is shocking, both to its extent and concerning the speed of events. The failed coup in 2016, in which more than 200 people lost their lives, gave president Erdoğan a pretext for declaring a state of emergency and thereby obtaining the authority to weed out remaining dissidents.
Swedish PEN is proud to publish texts of some who are at the focal point of persecution: poets, writers, journalists, people whose thoughts, words and experiences the Turkish state is actively trying to silence.
Here is a magnificent text on resistance by the writer Sema Kaygusuz.
Here is Ahmet Şık’s speech in court - the investigative journalist who wrote an sharp, critical book on the Gulen movement and now is accused of supporting it.
Here is publicist Can Dϋndar’s disillusioned analysis of Turkey, written from his exile in Berlin.
Here is lawyer Nazan Moroğlu’s account for how the legal position of women has deteriorated under Erdoğan’s government.
Here is the writer Tuba Ҁandar’s presentation of the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, as well as her experience of the conditions of exile.
The artist Pinar Öğrenci testifies to what happened to her when she marched for peace, and the writer and journalist, Ahmet Altan, describes a legal system so perverted that Kafka would have laughed in tears.
