It’s not in the Kedis­tan style to shear the wool off the back of those we sup­port, nor to seek per­son­al glo­ry from that support.

Our friend, jour­nal­ist and artist Zehra Doğan has been back in prison since June 2017. Our read­ers know this and the more assid­u­ous among them have known of Zehra and her strug­gle for two years, since we devot­ed a first arti­cle to her. A rela­tion­ship formed with the jour­nal­ist, the woman and the artist which led Kedis­tan mag­a­zine, with­in its lim­it­ed means, and with the help of its read­ers fol­lowed by an increas­ing­ly large sup­port group, to start a sup­port cam­paign for her pro­tec­tion and to press for her liberation.

As we had launched the idea with oth­ers in Novem­ber 2016 to sup­port writer Aslı Erdoğan, under threat of life impris­on­ment in Turkey, to “read and have oth­ers read her texts every­where”, begin­ning of 2017, we start­ed set­ting up the pos­si­bil­i­ty of exhibit­ing Zehra’s work across Europe, and of mak­ing the con­text of her work known.

Of course, this cam­paign was orga­nized with Zehra full agree­ment, as she worked non­stop, from her tem­po­rary place of exile in Turkey while await­ing her def­i­nite sen­tenc­ing that led to her sec­ond incar­cer­a­tion in June.

This relent­less work cov­er­ing close to 50 works done in order to tes­ti­fy with great strength and urgency, and with the tal­ent that is hers, was then “escaped” from Turkey at her request, along with some of her texts.

A pub­lish­er we had met a few months ear­li­er, offered to con­tribute to this escape. This led to the writ­ing and pro­duc­tion of a book, in all urgency, in July 2017. A book that, from then on, accom­pa­nied the exhi­bi­tions that took place and that sev­er­al of you have acquired.

In order to man­age all the steps rel­a­tive to the exhi­bi­tions, their set­ting up, insur­ance and rights, the Asso­ci­a­tion Des Amis du Kedis­tan had of course tak­en the pre­cau­tion with Zehra of enter­ing into a con­tract in due form, not for the “exploita­tion” of Zehra’s intel­lec­tu­al and artis­tic rights, but for “their man­age­ment, entire­ly free of charge”.

We then dis­cov­ered a world we did­n’t know, that of the com­merce of Art, of Pub­lish­ing, of “cul­tur­al play­ers”. And – as in all worlds – both its good and bad things, its good and bad people.

A few of us at Kedis­tan have now learned to keep “good faith” in our pock­et when ven­tur­ing into that microcosm. 

The pub­lish­er of the book “Les yeux grands ouverts”, ded­i­cat­ed to Zehra Doğan has now bru­tal­ly slammed the door on the cam­paign while want­i­ng to col­lect its “ben­e­fits”.

Hun­dreds of copies of the book, pre­pared with­out a con­tract with the pub­lish­er, in urgency and good faith, have now been sold. Almost 500 of them were sold dur­ing the exhi­bi­tions by vol­un­teers and activists, by asso­ci­a­tions orga­niz­ing the events and direct­ly on Kedis­tan’s web­site. Oth­ers, through book­stores, since January.

Who could accept that a pub­lish­er col­lect the finan­cial ben­e­fits of this vol­un­teer work after she had com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the ven­ture with no oth­er finan­cial con­sid­er­a­tion than recov­er­ing the pro­duc­tion costs of the book? 

We are not fools at Kedis­tan. We know we live in a world where cap­i­tal­ist prof­it is the rule. But when such invites itself into a sol­i­dar­i­ty cam­paign, and what is more with an ele­ment of pre­med­i­ta­tion betray­ing a rela­tion­ship based on trust, we are astounded.

Kedis­tan will work to pro­tect Zehra’s rights from this com­mer­cial greed, and expects this pub­lish­er to return to earth – and to legal­i­ty: that she enter into a con­tract with the admin­is­tra­tors of Zehra Doğan’s rights, that she pay the debts cov­er­ing trans­la­tion, the use of visu­als, the remu­ner­a­tion of col­lab­o­ra­tors to the book, and Zehra’s droits d’au­teur emol­u­ments, still unpaid. All this rep­re­sents a not-insignif­i­cant amount owed to our friend, who can­not defend her­self since she is a pris­on­er in a Turk­ish jail. We might add that the authors, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er, the trans­la­tor had, from the out­set, announced their inten­tion to donate these ret­ri­bu­tions to Zehra’s sup­port fund, man­aged in full trans­paren­cy online HERE.

We hold a clear man­date in this respect: Arti­cle 4 © “The legal rep­re­sen­ta­tive (Amis du Kedis­tan) insures that emol­u­ments owed to the artist are rapid­ly col­lect­ed and remit­ted to the artist by those par­ties thus indebt­ed to her.” 

We had tak­en these pre­cau­tions pre­cise­ly to avoid this type of abuse of a state of weak­ness against Zehra which might have been the work of art mer­chants or of unscrupu­lous oth­ers. Appar­ent­ly, this was not enough, and we are forced to drag the mat­ter out in the open in order to denounce it.

We feel total­ly respon­si­ble to all the peo­ple and asso­ci­a­tions, activists, and read­ers who, from the begin­ning, have accom­pa­ied this sup­port cam­paign for Zehra and we have com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy with all. 

Need­less to say,  all this also has a rela­tion­ship with a cer­tain can­cel­la­tion of a Parisian exhi­bi­tion, where can be found the same play­ers who know each oth­er from way back.

For Kedis­tan, sol­i­dar­i­ty has no price tag, nor can it be com­mer­cial­ized, espe­cial­ly when these preda­to­ry prac­tices imper­il a sup­port cam­paign tes­ti­fy­ing to three years of ongo­ing mas­sacres in Turkey. 

And while we must attend to these low blows, our main infor­ma­tion mis­sion is affect­ed at a time when, more than ever, the real­i­ty in the Mid­dle-East calls for tes­ti­mo­ny, infor­ma­tion and analy­ses, mat­ters at the heart of our rea­son for existing.

Les Amis du Kedistan


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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