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The Asso­ci­a­tion of Ger­man Jour­nal­ists (DJV) of Hes­sen has begun a spon­sor­ing cam­paign for jour­nal­ists impris­oned in Turkey.

As part of this cam­paign, our friend and col­league Ned­im Tür­fent is being spon­sored by Sylvia Kuck, Pres­i­dent of the Wies­baden sec­tion and mem­ber of its board of administration.

The Turk­ish Court of Cas­sa­tion hav­ing con­firmed the ver­dict of Octo­ber 9 2019, Ned­im Tür­fent, a jour­nal­ist of the DIHA agency, is cur­rent­ly serv­ing a sen­tence of 8 years and 9 months in prison. He was con­demned on invent­ed ter­ror­ism charges fol­low­ing an inequitable tri­al dur­ing which dozens of wit­ness­es declared they had been tor­tured in order to tes­ti­fy against him.

Incar­cer­at­ed since May 13 2016 in the prison in Van, he con­tin­ues to write with deter­mi­na­tion dur­ing his captivity.

His col­lec­tion of poems in Turk­ish “Yaşamın Tutuk­lu Say­fası” (The impris­oned page of life) was pub­lished in June 2020. The pref­ace is by Ege Dün­dar from PEN Inter­na­tion­al and the cov­er page is a draw­ing Zehra Doğan had done for Ned­im on one of the sheets from the pen­i­ten­tiary admin­is­tra­tion, while she was incar­cer­at­ed herself.

The Asso­ci­a­tion of Ger­man Jour­nal­ists of Hes­sen had already spon­sored oth­er jour­nal­ists and authors such as Deniz Yücel, Can Dün­dar, Meşale Tolu and Zehra Doğan to whom it had award­ed the “Pen for free­dom of the press” in 2018 while she was still in prison.1

Here is the appeal by Sylvia Kuck, pub­lished on the asso­ci­a­tion’s web­site.

Wies­baden, March 5 2021 – The Asso­ci­a­tion of Ger­man Jour­nal­ists (DJV) of Hes­sen wish­es to con­cen­trate on Turkey. More than 50 jour­nal­ists are impris­oned with­out tri­al there. The Erdo­gan gov­ern­ment accus­es them of ter­ror­ist pro­pa­gan­da. “But in fact, they were only doing their job,” declared Knud Zil­ian, Pres­i­dent of DJV-Hes­sen. “Col­leagues are in prison because they report­ed on what they saw and expe­ri­enced, but this does not suit Erdo­gan and his AKP.”

The mem­bers of DJV are com­mit­ted to the prac­tice of inde­pen­dent and crit­i­cal jour­nal­ism. As there are prac­ti­cal­ly no free media in Turkey like those in Hesse and in Ger­many, they wish to sup­port their impris­oned col­leagues with cards and let­ters. This also helped Deniz Yücel, jour­nal­ist at “Welt” who has roots in Flör­sheim in Hesse. This cor­re­spon­dent was lib­er­at­ed from Turk­ish prison in the sum­mer of 2018. He sup­ports the action of DKV-Hes­sen, because “soli­tary con­fin­ment, being cut off from the out­side world is the most bru­tal thing imaginable.”

In Deniz Yücel’s case, sol­i­dar­i­ty actions, spon­sor­ing, includ­ing those from DJV-Hes­sen, helped. The same is true for Can Dün­dar, Mesale Tolu or Zehra Doğan. In 2018, DJV-Hes­sen had award­ed Zehra the “Pen for media free­dom”. At the time, the Kur­dish artist and jour­nal­ist was in prison in Diyarbakir. Short­ly after her lib­er­a­tion, she exhib­it­ed in Wies­baden works cre­at­ed in prison.

“Give your sup­port ! We will pass on address­es and will accom­pa­ny you in your action !”

Sylvia Kuck
info@djv-hessen.de
www.djv-hessen.de

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