Com­ing at a few days’ inter­val, the arrest of French jour­nal­ist Loup Bureau and the heavy sen­tences hand­ed down to two Czech nation­als, Marké­ta Všeli­chová and Miroslav Farkas, also arrest­ed at the check­point between Turkey, Irak and Syr­ia in Novem­ber 2016, bring more light to the Turk­ish regime’s intentions.
If these arrests share a com­mon back­ground with those of the oth­er 160 jour­nal­ists jailed in Turkey, and the clos­ing down and ban placed on close to 200 media out­lets, they also rep­re­sent an offen­sive direct­ly linked to Erdoğan’s will to place the YPG/YPJ in a top spot on “inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism” lists that have qua­si “judi­cia­ry” stand­ing in indict­ments and sentencing…

The indict­ments will then be mod­u­lat­ed as “pro­pa­gan­da for”, “col­lab­o­ra­tion with” or “belong­ing to”.
Thus, accord­ing to the Turk­ish press agency Anadolu (the master’s voice in Turkey, yet often con­sid­ered on the same foot­ing as AFP) the two Czech nation­als “were orga­ni­zat­ing anti-Turk­ish pro­pa­gan­da in Europe, as con­firmed by their dif­fer­ent trips to Syr­ia and Irak”. As cor­rob­o­ra­tion: the use of Google who is not the best of friends in such a case, since post­ed on it are “images” that will serve to demon­strate your “ter­ror­ist collaboration”.

Journalism becomes a crime by percolation.

To avoid such a treat­ment, one would have to be a “mem­ber of the spe­cial forces” of the coali­tion, the only ones autho­rized con­tact with Kur­dish forces, or to be “embed­ded” with the for­mer, as the master’s voice for said coalition.

We have not received any infor­ma­tion from Turkey yet. But if I rely on reports in the Turk­ish media, the two Czech ter­ror­ists were fight­ers with the YPG which is the Syr­i­an branch of the PKK ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion (PKK : Work­ers Par­ty of Kur­dis­tan). I have no idea how long the judi­cia­ry process will last. What I do know is that many ter­ror­ists have been arrest­ed in Turkey so the pro­ce­dure may take a cer­tain time.”
Thus spoke Ahmet Necati Bigali, the Turk­ish ambas­sador to the Czech Repub­lic in Novem­ber 2016. Note that he reads “his” media pri­or to commenting…

In the spe­cif­ic instance of these two Czech activists, Marké­ta Všeli­chová et Miroslav Farkas, sen­tenced these past few days, no dis­tinc­tion was drawn between assis­tance, trans­mis­sion of infor­ma­tion on the Roja­va strug­gle, mate­r­i­al aid or intel­li­gence… Their involve­ment was their mis­sion as “cit­i­zens of the world” and per­formed accord­ing to needs, and their areas of expertise.

Of course, the judi­cia­ry bat­tle has required, and will go on requir­ing the need to exploit “proof” and “defences”.
The lawyers who put forth Marké­ta Všelichová’s words in an inter­view on Czech radio last spring will come up against a Turk­ish injus­tice that uses this kind of inter­na­tion­al anti-ter­ror­ist jurispru­dence to advance a YPG/YPJ quar­an­tine and, tomor­row the com­mu­nal­ist polit­i­cal organs of the North­ern Syr­i­an Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­fed­er­a­tion. In the inter­view she “did not hide the fact her repeat­ed trips to the region were done in order to aid the Kurds, but she had also said that she and Miroslav Farkas, the oth­er Czech nation­al arrest­ed with her were not going into the region to sup­ply weapons to the Kur­dish militia.”

After 8 months await­ing tri­al in jail, the sen­tences have just been hand­ed down : 6 year and three months impris­on­ment for both of them.

When they were arrest­ed in the first half of Novem­ber 2016, the two Czechs were attempt­ing to enter Turkey from Syr­ia in the province of Şır­nak, locat­ed in the South-east of Turkey, at the lim­i­tas of Ira­ki territory.

We must also note that they were more or less “hand­ed over” to the Turk­ish author­i­ties in 2016 by the Ira­ki Kur­dish author­i­ties… Any “jour­nal­ist” or activist who has attempt­ed trav­el from Roja­va to Turkey via Ira­ki Kur­dis­tan, also knows that author­i­ties in Erbil lean toward zeal when it comes to anti-terrorism…

And it is pre­cise­ly in the same sec­tor that Loup Bureau was arrested.

This almost-unavoid­able cross­ing point is under close sur­veil­lance by the Turk­ish regime’s forces. And those arrest­ed there undoubt­ed­ly have files already if they have made pub­lic their “activ­i­ty” and their “sup­port”. In this area, Google, Twit­ter and Face­book are fear­some ene­mies, even worse than affil­i­a­tion to a media, when these indis­pens­able tools are turned against the jour­nal­ist or activist…

But, should they not have heed­ed French diplo­ma­cy “recom­man­da­tions” that state so clear­ly that “The imme­di­ate vicini­ties of the bor­ders with Syr­ia and Irak are strict­ly advised against…South and South­east­ern depart­ments are unad­vis­able except for imper­a­tive needs because of the con­flict in Syr­ia, and clash­es between the Turk­ish secu­ri­ty forces and PKK fight­ers may cause col­lat­er­al dam­ages.” (sic)

Thus, Loup Bureau would have failed to observed post­ed cour­tesy rules so that he now finds him­self, after one week in cus­tody, charged with “par­tic­i­pa­tion in a ter­ror­ist group” and also incar­cer­at­ed await­ing “tri­al”. His 2013 reportage for TV5 Monde served as “evi­dence” for the indictment.

Loup Bureau is indict­ed. He is for­mal­ly des­ig­nat­ed by Turk­ish author­i­ties pro­ceed­ing to mass jailinsg of jour­nal­ists who wish to speak inde­pen­dent­ly of the war Turkey is wag­ing on the Syr­i­an bor­der”, says Me Pradel, the French lawyer who has giv­en man­date to a local col­league in Turkey. A new hear­ing should be held in the upcom­ing days. (source : Le Monde).

A fur­ther step has been tak­en, already we are no longer in the same log­ic as in pre­vi­ous cas­es, such as that of Olivi­er Bertrand, cofounder of the web­site Les Jours, in 2016, or that of Math­ias Depar­don, arrest­ed then expelled one month lat­er because he was work­ing with­out a Turk­ish press card.

Here the Turk­ish regime’s polit­i­cal will is fed by a fever­ish surge against Roja­va, as con­firmed by the recent attempts at pen­e­trat­ing the ter­ri­to­ry around Kobanê. More­over, Loup Bureau isn’t a spokesman for “last­ing objec­tiv­i­ty”… And this is why we are link­ing in this same arti­cle the case against the Czech activists and that against Loup Bureau.

We don’t do so in order to make mat­ters worse, nor in order to cre­ate dubi­ous con­nec­tions, or to alarm his sup­port­ers who are cer­tain­ly just as aware as we are of the fact the stakes are much more polit­i­cal than judi­cia­ry. It’s a ques­tion of keep­ing our eyes wide open.

Let’s set aside for now the “diplo­mat­ic nego­ti­a­tions” under­way and sup­port his legal defence. But in order to defend him, the “pro­fes­sion” will have to go fur­ther and not be mealy-mouthed con­cern­ing a col­league who will not appear objec­tive to some, and who may be a vic­tim of his sub­jec­tiv­i­ty. This is why it is some­times men­tioned that he is “free­lance” which in cod­ed lan­guage means he fol­lows his own rules. For our part, we pre­fer to con­sid­er he does not have to answer to a “polti­cal­ly cor­rect” edi­to­r­i­al board.

It is impos­si­ble to sup­port and defend jour­nal­ists against the poli­cies of Erdoğan’s regime and those he’s con­duct­ing in Syr­ia with­out break­ing with con­ven­tion­al anti-ter­ror­ism vocab­u­lary con­cern­ing Kur­dish fight­ers, expos­ing one’s self to the regime’s fury, and step­ping on diplo­mat­ic toes…

Defend­ing Loup Bureau, with all forms and demo­c­ra­t­ic expres­sions must be on every journalist’s agen­da in the com­ing weeks.

And per­haps in this move­ment, real­iza­tion will grow that the cam­paign for Zehra Doğan stems from the same demands to free Loup Bureau or Ahmet Şık and Deniz Yücel . It will also allow to take the mea­sure of the Turk­ish polit­i­cal regime’s unsuit­abil­i­ty as the part­ner Euro­pean politi­cians keep putting forth for a “last­ing peace”.

*

In french : Loup Bureau • Le con­texte poli­tique de son arrestation

Reportage by Loup Bureau shown on TV5 in 2013.

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