PROLOGUE
This book is based on long-term observations, social events and what is being done to address human rights violations. It tries to be the voice of people whose rights are taken away, who are silenced and sent to prison in today’s Turkey. It tries to be the cry of silenced journalists. It touches upon the stories of lost lives. It reveals important neglects regarding minorities once again. It leaves a note in history as an archive.
Book has two main parts:
1. Conscience for Justice
2. Unheard Stories
This book is written on behalf of millions of innocent people who are jailed and silenced in Turkey. This book is written to load a serious responsibility to ideas, words. The book let them free to fly to reach hearts of conscientious people of this era. This book is the story of innocence. This book is the story of betrayal. This book is the story of democracy, seeking for basic human rights.
Dutch artist and performer dear Nell Berger enriched the book with her illustrations. The book also features the view and opinion of MP Omer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, Former Commissioner on the South African Human Rights Commission Adv Mohamed Shafie Ameermia. Also, thanks for intro to Cees Buys, author and entrepreneur from Netherlands.
The book translation went through a local and foreign editorial board. It was brought to the printing stage after long efforts.
I have my sincere appreciation to my wife who assists and encourages me for my articles. I am very thankful to my friend Josh from London, my editor Ali Topdag from Crab Publishing, exiled journalist Bulent Kenes for his additional ideas and inspiring comments. And of course thanks to AST Advocates of Silenced Turkey. Many thanks to my friends who contributed to my book.
This book is dedicated to thousands of silenced people in Turkey between the years 2016-2023.
M. Ertuğrul Incekul
November 20, 2022
INTRODUCTION
With its unrestrained and horrendous victimizations, Turkey’s State of Emergency period openly demonstrates the reign of a genocide over the previous six years! The events of these recent years, which have been rife with the gravest illegalities in the history of the Republic of Turkey, have been appallingand must be recorded in history. These must be hauled upimmediately and followed up for restitution.
Turkey was already ranked in the global arena with exceedingly poor criteria in terms of democracy and law, and once the patently lawless government declared a state of emergency exploiting the coup attempt as an excuse, the conditions across the country worsened to become further disastrous. Is there any other period when a government squandered so much of the country’s resources to further entrench its rule? Is there any other period when the country’s people were so decimated? It is impossible to tell, for we are witnessing a period experienced via multiple severe traumas.
Massacring and exterminating people are common genocidal practices. Yet, the state’s current stance of physically destroying people with their relatives, children and others through successive pain and agony for years is cruel beyond description. This must be borne in mind evidently.
There is no need to describe these atrocities at length, but what needs to be done is to struggle. Cowering, taking things in stride, fear, hesitation, and surrender must not exist in the textbook of civil society! Several landmark struggles have been given on this matter; yet it is impossible to claim they are sufficient. Those who put up the struggle have done and are doing noteworthy efforts in terms of virtue and human rights, but there is still much more to be done. We will only become a real society when the civil society duly and truly fights against these atrocities! As long as this does not happen, we can only lament this matter, a gesture obviously not of much substance and does not transmute the oppression!
Remembering the agonizing and haunting massacres, prison victimizations, oppression, suffering families; for those who scream “Can anyone hear me?” “Save me!” in the silent dark nights on the waters of the Aegean Sea and Evros River where no one can hear them, and for those who drowned in the waters while crying for help, we all need to uphold the struggle and never give up. It is incumbent to provide unwavering support for all effort done on this matter. The work done so far is insufficient. It is a crucial duty and responsibility to back the hard efforts. Failing to support it is a grave injustice. Make this known to the whole society.
I commend this important endeavour and wish it success in reaching the social awareness it seeks.
Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu HDP Deputy
Turkish Grand National Assembly
Nobody is free unless one of us is. That is why, wherever they occur and to whom they are perpetrated, I am worried about human rights violations. Many people must know this for the world to be freer and safer. Intellectuals, authors, civil society leaders and public figures have key roles in raising this awareness. In this sense, I deem my dear friend Ertuğrul İncekul’s book immensely precious. It is a bedside book that successfully blends the critical assessments, influential research, historical trends and human rights considerations. It is a must-read for current human rights advocates, aspiring human rights activists, and all concerned by human rights violations.
Yüksel Kaya
Board Member, Solidarity with Others
My new insights.
I slide foot by foot through time, through space. Occasionally stand still to feel, to slip in the time of oblivion. Then I am picked up by the wind and swirl like a leaf and land somewhere else. I lie still and look at my new environment! At first sight it seems very strange.
I’m a bit in a shock and for a moment I can’t breathe. My curious nature prevents me from completely to retire in my cocoon. I inhale very deep, and I must go one to see what is there realy. Then slowly my hart slows down. A warm feeling starts to slip inside my body. It makes me open for myself and you. It has to do with a feeling of love. A love that connects me to you.
I laugh to myself; I laugh about the imaginary bridge that I am crossing.
I’m standing up and I feel that my footsteps are more powerful. At first sight I can’t believe this feeling of openness of warmth.
I see you; you see me, we talk….
If we didn’t have a feeling of love, I wouldn’t meet you. I’m breathing and embrace my new steps.
It isn’t easy but with the love in my body I will go step by step and will learn a new language.
No, it isn’t easy but in the name of love and connection I have to go on.
Nell Berger
Artist and Performer
Who is telling the truth and who is not?
As an author and change management entrepreneur, I recently completed my new manuscript, tellingly titled “God’s Love and Religions”. One chapter in my book concerns Turkish refugees who fled their homeland, Turkey, because of alleged sympathies for the ideas of Muslim cleric and authority Mr Fethullah Gülen.
Once the current Turkish President Erdoğan and Mr Gülen were friends. Now, those inspired by Gülen are detained as terrorists by the current Turkish regime, deprived of what value they possess, socially isolated (read: terrorised) tortured and sometimes murdered. Their status as protected Turkish citizens has been taken away from them and with it their freedom, property, jobs, family harmony and everything else imaginable. Those Turks in the Erdoğan regime’s sights (and in doing so, know that many ordinary Turkish residents also participate in this) are rounded up and detained without any legal process (including their wives, children and even their babies). It is barbaric what is going on there in Turkey right now.
Many Turkish residents have seen their terrible fate in Turkey and have fled, often hastily. Many have headed for the West hoping to be safe there, trying to take with them what might still be of interest to them. To make matters worse, the Erdoğan regime has hounded these refugees as so-called Fetos. So, when an official government of a NATO country publicly says that this group of Turkish refugees are terrorists, this cry will strike fear into the hearts of many of the Western governments. So too will the Dutch government.
Formal questions were raised in this country’s government, leading to a well-known Dutch professor (Islam expert) at the University of the City of Utrecht (Prof. Dr. Martin van Bruinesse) being commissioned by the Dutch government to launch an extensive investigation into the nature of specifically these Turkish refugees. After completing his research, his conclusion was that this group of refugees can never and will never be terrorists and that there is absolutely no threat whatsoever from these people. It turned out that these people are mainly highly educated Turks who integrate quickly and definitely do not cause any nuisance, and preferably want to earn their own living again (i.e., contribute to the Dutch economy) as soon as possible.
I am happy and grateful that freedom of opinion, press and religion is constitutionally enshrined in the Netherlands and that these Turkish people can therefore return to a normal rhythm of life here. Their resilience and positivism is truly commendable: all respect to them!
So, the fact that you don’t have these freedoms in Turkey (anymore) indicates a democratic decay of unprecedented magnitude. For the sake of political and economic interests, there remains no condemnation of this behaviour and no significant pressure on this Turkish regime that now looks more like a brutal dictatorship.
The question I pose at the top of this article can now be answered: speak out on this!
Cees Buys
Author and Entrepreneur
It’s an essential reference book for everyone to know that human rights are about the right to live as a human being and the right to live in dignity, equality, and freedom. These freedoms are fundamental human rights. Any attempt at tampering with these fundamental human rights is a gross violation of human rights and must be challenged at all costs!
Adv Mohamed Shafie Ameermia
Former Commissioner on the South African Human Rights Commission.
Author’s remark on his new book about the ongoing human rights violations in Turkey. #JusticeDelayedisJusticeDenied published by AST Publishing, on Amazon by @ErtugrulIncekul
Amazon Link 👇
https://t.co/9uo7vEt0F8 pic.twitter.com/igU7QKn7AT— Advocates of Silenced Turkey (@silencedturkey) April 14, 2023
Our New Book Released…#JusticeDelayedisJusticeDenied published by AST Publishing, on Amazon by @ErtugrulIncekul
Amazon Link 👇
https://t.co/9uo7vEt0F8 pic.twitter.com/8umXLJkouZ— Advocates of Silenced Turkey (@silencedturkey) April 14, 2023
Our New Book is available on Amazon..#JusticeDelayedisJusticeDenied published by AST Publishing, on Amazon by @ErtugrulIncekul
Amazon Link 👇
https://t.co/9uo7vEt0F8 pic.twitter.com/AWmAR6OnPk— Advocates of Silenced Turkey (@silencedturkey) April 14, 2023
New Book Released.#JusticeDelayedisJusticeDenied published by AST Publishing, on Amazon by @ErtugrulIncekul
Amazon Link 👇https://t.co/9uo7vEt0F8 pic.twitter.com/jeGkMPDbZ1
— Advocates of Silenced Turkey (@silencedturkey) April 14, 2023
#JusticeDelayedisJusticeDenied published by AST Publishing, on Amazon by @ErtugrulIncekul
Amazon Link 👇https://t.co/9uo7vEt0F8 pic.twitter.com/xnUHNQLCLu
— Advocates of Silenced Turkey (@silencedturkey) April 14, 2023
#JusticeDelayedisJusticeDenied published by AST Publishing, on Amazon by @ErtugrulIncekul
Amazon Link 👇https://t.co/9uo7vEt0F8 pic.twitter.com/LR7eAGf6ch
— Advocates of Silenced Turkey (@silencedturkey) April 14, 2023
You can now find @ErtugrulIncekul ‘s book, #JusticeDelayedisJusticeDenied published by AST Publishing, on Amazon’s website.”
Amazon Link for the New Book 👇 https://t.co/9uo7vEt0F8 pic.twitter.com/LlBVqxhOko
— Advocates of Silenced Turkey (@silencedturkey) April 14, 2023
“Justice delayed is Justice denied” new book by Ertugrul Incekul from AST publishing will be available on AMAZON on Friday. The details of the book will be announced on Friday. pic.twitter.com/iAhVNaBEEJ
— Advocates of Silenced Turkey (@silencedturkey) April 12, 2023
AMAZON GOOGLE BOOKS GOOGLE PLAY