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Şûjin, the fem­i­nist news­pa­per, has been banned and shut down, fol­low­ing the pro­mul­ga­tion of decree n° 693 on August 25th. Şûjin’s offices and those of the news agency Diha, also for­bid­den by decree, have been placed under seal.

In Decem­ber 2016 we had announced the birth of Şûjin, a source for fem­i­nist infor­ma­tion, whose team was entire­ly com­posed of women. Şûjin was found­ed in the tra­di­tion of the Jin­ha news agency found­ed in March 2012 (you are famil­iar with one of its co-founders : Zehra Doğan) , and after it’s clos­ing down by decree on Octo­ber 30th 2016, along with a score of oth­er oppo­si­tion medias.


READ ALSO “Şûjin” the feminist newspaper with the tongue that stings

Şûjin like Jin­ha, adopt­ed an edi­to­r­i­al line cen­tered on infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing women and used an anti-patri­ar­chal lan­guage (that Kedis­tan glad­ly bor­rows from them).

Şûjin, targeted, threatened

Şûjin’s Beri­tan Elyakut

Beri­tan Elyakut, one of Şûjin’s con­trib­u­tors says : “Şûjin was tar­get­ed and its con­trib­u­tors threat­ened because it put the empha­sis on women’s strug­gles and brought to light the numer­ous assaults against women, with­in the fam­i­ly cir­cle, in their pro­fes­sion­al life, in oth­er words in both the pri­vate and the pub­lic sphere. We are per­fect­ly aware of the rea­sons why our news­pa­per was closed down. But we will not stop open­ing our eyes and ears and we will con­tin­ue to dis­play and denounce every­where the injus­tices, the vio­la­tions of rights, the assaults and the abuses. »

Beri­tan under­lines the fact medias are sub­ject­ed to inten­sive attack under the state of emer­gency.“We gath­ered on the day of clos­ing and we decid­ed to con­tin­ue our work as jour­nal­ists and to relay the infor­ma­tion we col­lect in news agen­cies, as well as on social media. None of our friends backed out and that was very exhilarating. »

The regime imposes ‘single-type’ journalism

The clos­ing down of medias such as ours is done in order to silence jour­nal­ists, just as in the 90’s, in order to block the cir­cu­la­tion of infor­ma­tion rel­a­tive to the South­east­ern region, notably in the west­ern part of the coun­try, » says Beri­tan. “Had we not been there, no one would have known how Kemal Kurkut was killed in the midst of the Newroz cel­e­bra­tions, the tor­tures com­mit­ted against the pop­u­la­tion of the entire vil­lage of Şap­atan, and the assaults and sex­u­al abuse… In fact, these exac­tions would have stayed hid­den, kept under wraps, and would have mul­ti­plied as a consequence… »

We existed, we exist, we will go on existing !

In Kur­dish, şûjin means “the big sewing nee­dle » the one used for heavy work, for exam­ple for bags meant for pack­ag­ing… The name was cho­sen « to stick it into the tongue of main­stream medias ! »

The şûjin tool is a woman’s inven­tion, and since şûjin includes the word jin, mean­ing « woman » in Kur­dish, it was per­fect to rep­re­sent the newspaper.

Women who began their ven­ture into self-defense with a nee­dle, con­tin­ue their strug­gle, even if the Şûjin paper has been shut down by the regime. Equiped with pen­cils and cam­eras, they will keep on prick­ing with the big nee­dle where need­ed, wher­ev­er male dom­i­na­tion, patri­archy, sex­ism, mil­i­tarism, racism and specism show up.

Beri­tan insists: “In Turkey, the pres­ence of a free press is cru­cial. We will con­tin­ue our work ‘with­out con­cern­ing our­selves with men’s judge­ment’ as our slo­gan announces. » She and her com­rades will denounce and point to every media and every attack tar­get­ing women, their life and their bodies.


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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Le petit mag­a­zine qui ne se laisse pas caress­er dans le sens du poil.