In recent days, well over 230 people from civil society, including ten journalists, have been arrested by the Turkish state. One of them is journalist Erdoğan Alayumat, who is accused because of his articles in the daily Yeni Özgür Politika. In an interview with ANF, his friend and colleague Hayri Tunç commented on the repression against the press, and said: "With these arrests and reprisals, the state is sending the message to journalists that if they are ‘on the side of the truth’, then they are against it. "

Tunç said that Alayumat had worked for 15 years and that he had been humiliated, including by being strip searched. He said he had often worked with Alayumat in various regions of Turkey and North Kurdistan. As a well-known and upright journalist, he had repeatedly been targeted by repression. The political proceedings by the Eskişehir Chief Public Prosecutor's Office were therefore no coincidence. Alayumat had already been arrested and detained in a similar manner several months ago, but he had stated that no proceedings would dissuade him from sharing the truth.

"The state wants to create a prototype of the 'reasonable journalist'"

The signal that the state is sending with these arrests is clear: "If you are journalists, then you have to be the way we want you to be." This idea is the core of the problem. The state is trying to create a prototype of the "reasonable journalist," said Tunç, and continued: "We are not the state's reasonable journalists. We will not let the state bring us into line. We are not connected to any center of power. Our profession is journalism, and we practise this profession according to the principles that our teachers taught us. The principle of always pursuing the truth. We are the voice of the voiceless. When torture is carried out, when rights are violated, we bring it to light. That is what Erdoğan Alayumat and our other arrested colleagues have done. They are repeatedly targeted because they are not 'reasonable journalists' according to the state's liking."

In the investigation, no other accusation was made than the journalistic activity of the arrested people.

"Either on the side of the government or the people"

Tunç stressed that journalism must take side: "Either you side with the government and ignore the violations of rights, or you side with the people and report on them. Erdoğan [Alayumat] has taken the side of the people. He was the voice of the people whose houses in Fikirtepe were demolished because of gentrification, he was the voice of the mussel sellers, he was the voice of the people in Ikizköy, where the forest was destroyed. He was the voice of the waste paper collectors.

We spent a month together in Hatay, one of the cities most affected by the earthquake. We saw the suffering of the people there. Should we have seen this suffering but limited ourselves to parroting the state’s statements? We couldn’t do that. We experienced it, we saw the pain, anger and abandonment of the people in the earthquake area. As I have just said, you either accept the government's explanation and report accordingly, or you write what you see with your own eyes, even contrary to the state's explanation. While we were reporting from the earthquake area, we were starving. We experienced the same conditions, the same cold, the lack of washing facilities as those people there. We could not ignore them. Neither our humanity nor our attitude would allow this.

This is precisely why we are being targeted today. We are on one side and the state is sending us the message: 'If you are not on my side, you will be punished.' We will not give in on this issue because we learned this from the people who are our teachers. We did not learn from people who do news at their desks. We did not learn from people who regurgitate the state's statement as supposed truth. The state claims something, but we went out to see what the people on the street were saying. We took the side of the truth. The state sees that as opposition."

"Failed politics and government"

Hayri Tunç concluded by saying: "Repression, arrests and detentions cannot deter journalists. I, too, went to prison, but when I came out, I continued my work. The state’s repression is nothing but failed politics, a failed government. This operation is all about intimidation."