Journalist Emre Soncan (36), who has been jailed in Turkey’s notorious Silivri Prison in İstanbul for 762 days and sentenced by a court to seven years, six months in prison on charges of “membership in a terrorist organisation,” has written an emotional letter on a baby sparrow dying in the ventilation of his ward.
Describing that he could not save the sparrow he tried to make it hold on to life, Soncan made an analogy between the migration of birds, the death of a baby sparrow, prison and freedom.
While finishing the letter, he said that “I no longer want to see the death of another sparrow in my ward… I am begging all the sparrows of the world… Do not make your nests in prisons…”
Journalist Soncan used to work for Turkey’s once-best-selling Zaman daily, which was closed down by the Turkish government in the aftermath of the controversial coup attempt due to its links to the Gülen movement. Soncan mainly covered defense issues and the president’s office.
A Turkish court on April 10, 2018, handed down a prison sentence of seven-and-a-half years on terror charges to Soncan, who is among dozens of journalists jailed in the aftermath of a controversial military coup attempt on July 15, 2016.
Soncan was detained 10 days after the coup attempt and was arrested along with 21 other journalists in the same investigation on July 29, 2016. With additional arrests, the number rose to 27. The trial at the İstanbul 25th High Criminal Court was concluded on March 8, 2018.
The full text of journalist Emre Soncan’s letter is as follows:
“To all the sparrows of the world…
I can not stand; when I see a little child crying for instance, the enormous sadness in his teeny tiny eyes comes and takes the lid off my heart; on top of that, seeps in, sits on the seat of honour; I mean it resonates like “come on, get up” in all the tender depths of my heart… Then I squint my eyes like his tearful eyes, suddenly our facial expressions resemble each other, one of my eyebrows lifts up slightly, my lips puckered forward as if I am going to drop an innocent and timid kiss… When our facial expressions hold hands, our hands also shake hands… When our moods are similar, I hug him and press his sadness on my chest… While making my voice sound like a child and asking “what happened?”, my forehead lines become clear. What pains I have collected in those lines, I want to say “I understand you child”… The child understands, with childish wisdom, what I meant… Confides his troubles… The big troubles of his tiny world hit my smiles and collapse… I mean I deal with the problem, whatever the matter is… How bigger the issue of a child, who hasn’t yet lived long enough to say ‘issue’ to an issue, not saddened, not been saddened, not dirtied, not been dirtied, could be…
And I can not resist when I see a father in a movie scene, on a novel page, who is too poor to buy a red bike for his son or a pink school bag or a football shoes… Even worse, If I see the same poor father on the news bulletins while posing over his sick child desperately, cupping his faces in her hands at a low ebb, I feel a tightness in my chest… First, I’d like to glide in the book pages and add some imaginary paragraphs, so that man can suddenly get rich, return home in the evening with a red bicycle, a pink school bag, and a football shoes… Then I imagine I have millions of dollars, so I can create an environment where all poor fathers can cure their sick children.
Moreover, I realized in the prison that I was unable to stand the sparrows in need… Lots of times I revived ants while drowning in the bathroom or washbasin but I couldn’t do anything for that sparrow, the drop of a baby sparrow from its nest to the concrete floor of nine-step ventilation area, the abandonment by the mother; the flutters, the failures in order to fly, once again its fall to the ground after the hits of its wings to the walls for dear life in its each try; then the acceptance of its destiny, by shivering the wait for death quietly, gently, finely; the indifferent glances into the wet bread that I extended with the tip of my index finger due to not knowing how to eat on its own, once again the start to wait for death by closing its eyes; its fear of death washing over my heart feather by feather, wing by wing, the feeling of deeply moved lest it would close its eyes forever; the trials to dribble a few drops of water from my fingertips into its mouth with a vain effort when I caught the beak open, the feeling of grief after my failures; the synergy of the inexperience that I couldn’t make it hold on life and the failures that I tried to keep it alive, and the descent of them like livid clouds over the prison…
Now the autumn is coming… The birds are gone… They have been loaded my despair against death over their wings and gone. Until the spring… They will come again… I no longer want to watch the death of another sparrow in the ward… I am begging all the sparrows of the world… Do not make your nests in jails… Neither leave your chirps on the fringes of the prison roofs nor leave your dead bodies on the cold floor of the ventilation… Because a thousand chirps are not worth a death…
Emre Soncan
Silivri Prison, August 2018″
Turkey is ranked 157th among 180 countries in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). If Turkey falls two more places, it will make it to the list of countries on the blacklist, which have the poorest record in press freedom.
Turkey is the biggest jailer of journalists in the world. The most recent figures documented by SCF show that 237 journalists and media workers were in jail as of August 15, 2018, most in pretrial detention. Of those in prison 169 were under arrest pending trial while only 68 journalists have been convicted and are serving their time. Detention warrants are outstanding for 145 journalists who are living in exile or remain at large in Turkey.
Detaining tens of thousands of people over alleged links to the Gülen movement, the government also closed down some 200 media outlets, including Kurdish news agencies and newspapers, after a coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016.
The post From jailed Turkish journalist Soncan to sparrows: ‘I am begging; don’t build your nests in jails’ appeared first on Stockholm Center for Freedom.
from Stockholm Center for Freedom https://stockholmcf.org/from-jailed-turkish-journalist-soncan-to-sparrows-i-am-begging-dont-build-your-nests-in-jails/
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