Appeals to insure Kedis­tan’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty will con­tin­ue, although in a mod­i­fied format.

Fol­low­ing the ret­ro­spec­tive on the out­go­ing year, the begin­ning of a new one is always an occa­sion for great resolutions.

Sev­er­al hun­dreds of you pro­vid­ed  finan­cial sup­port which allowed for Kedis­tan’s con­ti­nu­ity since our last appeal, 17 months ago.

We received 6965 € in dona­tions to cov­er the 6800 € bud­get required to insure Kedis­tan’s liveli­hood over that peri­od. And so, once again, a huge thank you to those of you who con­tributed. Need­less to say, 6500 € have already been spent.

17 months of Kedis­tan rep­re­sents the pub­li­ca­tion of over 2000 arti­cles and a freely acces­si­ble archive on Turkey and parts of the Mid­dle-East. As a reminder, the small team of vol­un­teers, whether jour­nal­ists or not, has grown and changed over time.

17 months, now rest­ing on a reg­is­tered sta­tus as an asso­ci­a­tion, rep­re­sents 17 months of lay­outs and pub­li­ca­tion, trans­la­tions (now also in Eng­lish), part­ner­ships, whether online or dur­ing pub­lic events. Those months also rep­re­sent pow­er­ful human con­tacts and ongo­ing links.

Those of you who read us reg­u­lar­ly know that we pro­vid­ed logis­ti­cal sup­port to some cam­paigns, such as the one for writer Aslı Erdoğan, who is now ful­ly in the lime­light at last, still fac­ing charges but, luck­i­ly on “time-out” in Ger­many. You were won­der­ful on that one. We can’t say as much for the ones who pro­vid­ed sup­port in the final hours, attract­ed by said lime­light… Once Asli was out on pro­vi­sion­al release, you also know we  start­ed telling you about Zehra Doğan, anoth­er emblem­at­ic fig­ure in the resis­tance, a young Kur­dish woman aged 28, who is a jour­nal­ist, a writer and a painter com­bined. She will be every­where on our web­site in 2018 and we will do every­thing so that she can be out in the light of day too, just as Aslı Erdoğan. And we hope not to be alone on that essen­tial emer­gency either.

A few fig­ures for the year now end­ing. (Source : sta­tis­tics from Kedis­tan server)

1 185 000 read­ers includ­ing 480 000 habit­u­al connections.

6 537 000 arti­cles read, for an aver­age of 5 arti­cles read per connection.

(For the geeks among you, there were some 21 mil­lion hits on the site in 2017).

To this date, read­ers iden­ti­fied as “con­nec­tion orig­i­nat­ing in France” remain the high­est, rep­re­sent­ing 60% of the total. Fol­lowed, in declin­ing order, by the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, Great Britain, Ger­many, Turkey, Bel­gium, Spain, Chi­na, Israel, Italy, Switzerland…and many oth­ers. Sta­tis­tics for Turkey are unre­li­able since VPNs often move traf­fic sta­tis­tics over to more “exot­ic” locations.

You should also know that, in order not to expose our read­ers to any num­ber of web search­es, we have elim­i­nat­ed the sta­tis­tics deliv­ered to google, and that those on our own serv­er will always remain confidential.

So here we are with a respon­si­bil­i­ty to insure that the alter­na­tive infor­ma­tion source that is Kedis­tan, among oth­ers, stays active and in con­stant improvement. 

Don’t wor­ry, we’re not inter­est­ed by the “buzz” nor is our ambi­tion to boost fig­ures and become the Mid­dle-East­ern ver­sion of Paris Match. We will con­tin­ue to inform out­side the main­stream, be it on the web­site or on our social media accounts. There­fore, we won’t be wast­ing dona­tions to buy spon­sors for our arti­cles or “likes” on Facebook…

Let’s get back to the appeal.

Between now and end of Jan­u­ary 2018, we will be redesign­ing the exist­ing “crowd­fund­ing” since it appears com­pli­cat­ed to some and not suf­fi­cient­ly prac­ti­cal at first sight. It will remain on the Hel­lo Asso site which is no more and no less eth­i­cal than oth­ers, but less prone to mer­chan­diz­ing and well secured.

For instance, those who wish to donate small month­ly amounts will be invit­ed to do so.

As a reminder, the mag­a­zine requires an aver­age of 400 € per month to insure its secu­ri­ty, ongo­ing oper­a­tions, main­te­nance, trav­el and reserves for recur­ring expens­es. No one in the team is paid for their work.

There­fore, the mutu­al sup­port request­ed is with­in the capa­bil­i­ties of our read­ers, if we look at the sta­tis­tics men­tioned above. Even 1 € when you come by would be large­ly enough if every­one pro­ceed­ed to donate in three clicks (this is meant for those who haven’t tried yet, of course).

We under­stand you may feel as if fund­ing appeals rain down on you from every web­site, not to men­tion the fire­men’s or the postal work­ers’ cal­en­dars – or you income tax return. But what is left of free inter­net access if worth a bit of mutu­al sup­port in its defence.

Final­ly, you have sure­ly noticed that Face­book reg­u­lar­ly makes trou­ble for us. Not real­ly because our con­tent upsets them (although, who knows…) but main­ly because we don’t play the spon­sor game on our arti­cles nor are we will­ing to pay for “likes”, some­thing we will nev­er do. So, start by vis­it­ing the Kedis­tan Face­book page, or sub­scribe to our Twit­ter feed if you use that ser­vice. And get into the sim­ple habit of shar­ing our arti­cles, when you agree with them, by click­ing on the arti­cle itself, or direct­ly from the social media page. This help is even more pre­cious that a donation.

For now, still in its cur­rent for­mu­la, here is our fund­ing appeal for Kedis­tan’s ongo­ing finan­cial health.

For trans­fers:

Les amis du Kedis­tan Crédit Mutuel / CM Mazé
IBAN FR76 1027 8394 1000 0219 6880 186
BIC CMCIFR2A

For online dona­tions: Click on the illus­tra­tion below


Français : Appel à dons… Encore et tou­jours pour Kedis­tan Cliquez pour lire

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