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ISTANBUL: Pen against sword: a profile of Ahmet Altan

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  • ISTANBUL: Pen against sword: a profile of Ahmet Altan

    Today's Zaman, Turkey
    Feb 7 2010

    Pen against sword: a profile of Ahmet Altan


    A number of months ago, Turkish army prosecutors sent Ahmet Altan,
    editor-in-chief of the Turkish newspaper Taraf, an ultimatum: Hand
    over the documents leaked from inside the army's general command, or
    we are coming for them.

    So Altan spent the night in his Ä°stanbul office, waiting for the raid.
    He wrote a column letting the army know he was looking forward to
    their arrival and had put on the tea. These days Taraf is at the
    forefront of another scandal based on leaked documents from inside the
    army -- an alleged plan to provoke both a military crisis with Greece
    and a domestic crisis using bombs against mosques.

    Foreigners living in Turkey and who watch local news will recognize
    Altan's newspaper from newscasts: Instead of reporting directly on the
    allegations, broadcasters often choose to report on Taraf's coverage
    of the allegations. A Taraf headline is a staple image of many TV news
    stories about alleged military misconduct.

    Since Altan helped launch the Taraf newspaper in November 2007, he and
    his news team have exposed army plots, cover-ups and national security
    negligence. They have published leaked plans for a military coup
    d'etat that was to follow the Justice and Development Party's (AK
    Party) 2002 election victory. They have published an alleged army plan
    to plant guns and bombs in the homes of both AK Party members and
    followers of Fethullah Gülen, an influential Muslim scholar. And they
    have published transcripts of radio conversations between army
    officers conspiring to blame the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) for
    the death of nine soldiers who had driven over their own landmine.

    `If we have the document, and if it's news, we publish it. We don't
    care who will be harmed,' says Altan.

    Until relatively recently, such coverage of the Turkish army didn't
    happen. Since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk established the Turkish Republic
    in 1923, the state and the army have been nearly synonymous, and the
    army has seen itself as a protector and heir to Atatürk's cherished
    secular legacy. Disparaging the army's image has always been illegal.
    Schools teach reverence for the army, and media bosses, with big
    business interests, have known that breaking faith with the army means
    losing bank loans and state contracts.

    `If the army rules a country, they need taboos; otherwise, people
    would ask questions,' says Altan. `They need Atatürk. They need huge
    flags. ¦ They need a lot of lies about history.'

    Beyond exposing army scandals, Altan and his team have broken many of
    the most entrenched taboos of Turkish public life. On Taraf's front
    page, Altan has affirmed the Armenian genocide; he printed the first
    Kurdish headline in a national newspaper; and when reporting deaths
    from Turkey's conflict with the PKK, Taraf does not make the
    conventional distinction between dead `terrorists' and `martyrs.'

    All of which can bring more than just legal trouble. Many journalists
    here complain of defamation and slander campaigns mounted against
    them, and in Turkey, slander can get you killed. In 2007, Hrant Dink,
    a Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor, was murdered by fascists after a
    Turkish court found him guilty of `denigrating Turkishness.'
    (Afterwards an Internet video surfaced showing police holding the
    alleged assassin in custody, celebrating him as a hero and posing with
    him for photos.)

    In late 2008, after Taraf published leaked satellite photos showing
    the army had allowed, whether by negligence or complicity, a PKK
    attack on an army outpost -- which killed 17 soldiers -- Chief of
    General Staff Gen. Ä°lker BaÅ?buÄ? publicly denounced the newspaper,
    saying, `Those who present the actions of the separatist terrorist
    organization as successful acts are responsible for the blood that has
    been shed and will be shed.'

    Does Altan feel brave? `No,' he answers. `Bravery is something good
    for warriors. Not writers.'

    He has a gun

    And though Altan carries a Sig Sauer 9mm handgun for protection, the
    real day-to-day struggle is through borderline insolvency and endless
    legal drudgery. There are currently more than 100 prosecutions pending
    against Taraf, and many of its editors and columnists have been
    personally charged.

    Bianet, a Turkish media monitor group, reported that in April, May and
    June 2009, 57 journalists were put on trial in Turkey. Reporters
    without Borders ranked Turkey 102nd out of 173 countries for press
    freedom in 2008. YouTube and Richard Dawkins's official Web site are
    blocked here. In 2006, a leaked memo revealed the army had categorized
    Turkish journalists as `pro' or `anti' army.

    In total, Altan has so far been personally charged more than 50 times
    and estimates he has faced a total of 100 years of jail time. `To be
    charged is nothing new for me. It's part of life.'

    Born in 1950, Altan grew up in Ankara and Ä°stanbul. He was kicked out
    of the top primary school, high school and university in Turkey,
    apparently for the same reasons each time: laziness, indifference and
    `sometimes arrogance,' he says, smiling. Eventually graduating from
    Ä°stanbul University with a degree in economics, Altan began
    translating novels and working as a journalist.

    Altan's vocation seems, in part, to have been inherited. His father,
    Ã?etin Altan -- a well-known writer and former member of Parliament --
    was charged more than 300 times during his career and was jailed for
    his politics. `When I was a child, nearly every morning he used to go
    to court. I believed it was very normal, that every father goes to
    court and then to his office,' says Altan, laughing. `He taught us:
    Don't be a traitor to writing. If you betray writing, you will lose
    yourself. You must not have any concern other than the honesty and
    sincerity of your writing.'

    Ahmet Altan has published eight novels, the first when he was 32. A
    number have been best sellers; some have won prestigious awards. And,
    in 1985, a judge found one of his novels to be so obscene he ordered
    all copies rounded up and burned.

    Ten years later, Altan wrote a column in a national newspaper
    describing `Kurdey,' a country whose ruling Kurdish majority oppressed
    and deprived a Turkish minority of cultural rights -- Altan's inverse
    view of contemporary Turkey. He was fired, convicted of `supporting
    terrorism' and given a suspended sentence of one-and-a-half years.
    Altan seems a natural to lead one of the most effectively iconoclastic
    Turkish newspapers. But when he was first asked to do the job, he
    refused `10 or 15 times' before finally agreeing.

    `If I leave, it will be very hard to keep the newspaper together'

    `I said it's too risky, you will lose a lot of money and I don't want
    to,' Altan recalls. `I'm 60. I'm a novelist. I like to write novels. I
    don't like running a newspaper. Someone else can do that. No one else
    can write my novels. And I don't have too much time. I want to go back
    to my old life. I like to swim in the mornings. I used to have money.
    I used to have time. I used to work when I wanted. Look now,' Altan
    says. `My last novel sold 1 million copies. Am I lucky now -- to be
    here?'

    `It is a weakness to think you are very important. [But] I think I am
    very important for this newspaper. That's my weakness. And I think if
    I leave, it will be very hard to keep the newspaper together.' He says
    he doesn't want the owner to lose his money or his reporters to lose
    their jobs. But might not Turkey also lose something if Taraf closes?
    `Taraf has opened the door; now others can easily pass through that
    door,' Altan answers.

    Altan portrays himself as reluctant and somehow ill-suited to his
    position at Taraf, but his aggressive coverage of the army and state
    is a practical expression of beliefs he has held for years: that the
    sovereign nation state has no future and that Turkey's future is with
    the European Union.

    `With its wars, prisons, police, spies, assassins and torturers, the
    state is the most obvious representative of savagery in this age,'
    Altan said in a 2004 speech to a United Nations' conference on the
    death penalty.

    But the EU is a `new style of state ¦ In a way, it is communism, but
    it has come in a way different than how Marx thought it would,' says
    Altan.

    `What we are trying to do [at Taraf] is to help Turkey go along with
    the development of the world, peacefully,' says Altan. `But the
    Turkish state does not want to see that reality.'

    `So, of course, I started this newspaper knowing what I would do,' he
    says. Altan believes progress is inevitable. `[But] we want to stop
    losing lives while we get there. We want to stop losing children in
    the Southeast.' (In Turkey's war with the PKK most people are killed
    in the southeastern corner of the country.)

    However, millions of Turks are passionately secular and believe the
    army is the only thing protecting Turkey from an Islamic takeover. The
    reforms and massive electoral success of the governing AK Party have
    increased secularists' anxiety -- especially as the civilian
    government is now, for the first time, successfully forcing the army
    to relinquish the state. Many Turks fear this means Shariah -- Islamic
    law -- will eventually govern Turkey. And among many of these people,
    it is taken for granted that Altan's newspaper is a tool of the
    Islamists. `They say [religious] conservatives want Shariah. But what
    I see is that the conservatives want the European Union,' Altan says.
    `And they must [join the EU]; otherwise, they can't have the power.'
    The AK Party is the only major party in Turkey in favor of joining the
    EU, and one of the criteria for EU membership is civilian control of a
    country's army.

    `I measure [their] politics according to their approach to the
    European Union. If someone wants to be part of it, I support them. I
    don't care who they are,' says Altan. `I'm an atheist, and I don't see
    any danger of Shariah ¦ And if we [Taraf newspaper] see any sign of
    Shariah, we will go after it,' Altan says. `You can't bring Shariah at
    the same time you are trying to join the EU.'

    `We want the people to be free here. Muslims, Alevis, Kurds,
    democrats, leftists, rightists, every citizen of Turkey must be free
    to express themselves and to live how they want. ¦[But] we have a
    funny problem here. Those with a Western [lifestyle] are against
    Western democracy; those who are against the Western style of life
    accept Western [political] values.'

    Altan calls those with a Western lifestyle `the minority,' and the
    more pious majority `the people.'

    `The minority,' Altan says, `I think they hate the people. They do not
    want the people to take power because the people cannot dance, they
    don't like to drink wine, they do not know how to flirt. Yes, their
    lifestyle is very different. Yes, my lifestyle is very much like those
    who blame me now. But I like the people. I know they are not stupid. I
    like to talk to them. I see how witty they are, how intelligent they
    are, how aware of the situation they are¦ And I want them to take the
    power. And it's something that must happen. The power belongs to the
    people.'




    07 February 2010, Sunday
    CALEB LAUER Ä°STANBUL
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