Abstract
CREDIT: (portrait) Milena Schloesser; (illustration) Emma Hanquist / Ikon Images
After a news report I made in Turkey on the transfer of Turkish weapons to Syrian fighters was deemed a “state secret”, I was sentenced to 28 years in prison and was the target of an assassination attempt. I was compelled to continue my profession outside the country.
The last seven years of my 45 as a journalist have been spent in Berlin. As soon as I arrived in the city, I established a media platform called Ozguruz (“We are free"). After dissident journalists from Turkey joined, Afghan colleagues came, then Ukrainians and Russians, and now Palestinians.
Wherever there is oppression or war in the world, journalists who are excluded from their home countries and are scattered around the globe are trying to overcome the wall of censorship and reach people back home through their work. This growing trend has become an important contribution to the struggle for truth. However, being far away from oppressive environments does not mean that the problems are over - quite the contrary, as I have learnt.
Here are just some of the challenges. First and foremost, money. How will you finance your media outlet? With foreign funding? It’s very likely that you will be immediately accused of espionage. As a consequence, access to your site will be banned. Our website was supposed to go live on 24 January 2017, but the Turkish government’s ban was issued on 23 January without it even knowing the content (something condemned by Index and 38 other civil organisations at the time). Thus, we gained the honour of being the first website shut down before its launch. The political-military-economic relations of the country you are broadcasting from with the country you come from are important, too. The country you’re broadcasting from is not always prepared to risk profitable trade for free media.
Can you instead finance your media outlet through subscriptions? Would people send contributions if that meant taking the risk of being branded as “terrorism supporters”?
Then there is the question of operations. What about staff?
Yes, our numbers are growing - but it is still hard finding media professionals in exile. Contributing from within is extremely risky. What if they use pen names? Would their correspondence be monitored? What about you, yourself? Even if free in your new land, you are under pressure to start and finance a new life, learn a new language and overcome bureaucratic restrictions. At the same time, your family, your loved ones, are still in the country you left. Can you afford to risk their lives with what you write? With this very question, self-censorship begins to replace censorship.
Access to resources and to sources is another problem. Most will hesitate before sharing information with dissidents. The possibility of double-checking information from official sources is almost non-existent. And, of course, there is the security problem. In our case, Turkish intelligence wasted little time before identifying our address and sending a pro-government TV channel crew to “raid” us. One day, out of the blue, a crew broadcast outside our door – “The den of treason!”
They showed the building, down to the window of our office, gave the address and announced our arrival and departure times. From then on, we were open targets.
Let’s say you overcome all this. How would you reach your audience?
We’ve been playing Whac-A-Mole with the government ever since we first went on air. We have tried to give a voice through every communication channel possible: YouTube, Periscope, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. If one got blocked, we’d air through another. The address of the site we are currently publishing on is
Another example in the field of book publishing shows a censorship workaround. Despite being published in seven languages, my book’s Turkish edition was banned in Turkey. In the end, we offered readers there the opportunity to download the book for free. We reached 30,000 readers within a week.
Then there is Forbidden Stories, a project in which journalists pick up stories where others were forced to leave, and RSF’s pioneering initiative to launch the Svoboda Satellite Package that provides independent journalism to Russian-speaking populations.
Both are important initiatives that show how journalists in exile can thwart censorship back home. We’ve had too many troubles to count; yet, as these examples show, it is possible to insist on telling the truth. Nay, it is essential. The first rule is to never give up. This resolve means you’ll find ways to overcome all the above troubles, since courage is no less infectious than fear.
And we must now globalise this courage. We must counter the threats from censorship around the globe with solidarity on a global scale. Just as autocrats who censor us mimic and learn from each other, we must collaborate with each other.
Here is my proposal: There is an urgent need for an organisation that brings together exiled journalists striving to pursue the truth in different corners of the world under one umbrella. Such an organisation would facilitate easy exchange of information, enable members to benefit from each other’s experiences, give them the opportunity to exchange ideas for new journalistic standards appropriate to the new conditions, and serve as a primary news source for the media in the countries they are based. We’d discuss all the above problems and also all the above solutions.
International solidarity and the courage that transcends borders makes it easier to overcome censorship of truth, wherever we may be. Together we can form the most powerful alliance of exiled journalists. So, who’s joining me?