The System---It's Falling Down.

       It is obvious, even to those politically blind and politically apathetic, that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is a psychopathic power hungry, vicious dictator. Journals are closed down, staff are jailed, protests are savagely broken up, any form of dissenting voice is brutally attacked, thousands are dismissed from their employment because of their political view, thousands are imprisoned on any state whim. Turkey is a despotic entity that relies on extreme heavy handed police repression to exist. The harder the state attempts to crush the will of the people, the stronger the resistance will grow. The explosion will come, but it will require all our support and solidarity, plus the oxygen of publicity, the eyes of the people who desire freedom must focus on any resistance against the state that arises in any state.

 From Freedom: Anarchist Media, Publishing and Bookshop (UK)

         Late last month the editor of Meydan anarchist newspaper in Istanbul was sentenced to a year and three months in prison for “supporting terror,” the latest in a string of attempts by the Turkish State to shut down dissenting voices against Erdogan’s government. Today we are proud to publish a translation of Meydan’s uncompromising response, from their latest edition.
We are being cornered
        With the fear and shock that constantly oppresses our lives, with the agendas that change by the day, by the hour, with the constant repetition we see in news articles, debates, newspapers and radios, with the shares and retweets, the media that takes us for idiots and is fed by manipulation, with the gentrification and demolition policies that erase our past, our identity and our memory, with the “illusion of democracy” that weakens and imprisons our freedom, and with the reality that becomes more and more incomprehensible everyday, we are being cornered.
We are being cornered because the rulers require it in order to declare their authority and assert their dominance over our stolen willpower. We are being cornered because the rulers require it to keep their power and to create new objects to use in their own wars. We are being cornered because this is the only way the government is able to create space for itself and exist.
We are being cornered by misery
        The days that have to keep going through the exhaustion, the bodies that fall powerless, the minds that become unhappy as they weaken…
The rulers submerge the streets that we use to walk to school in the mornings, to go to work and to catch a bus in darkness. They comer us with unhappiness by squeezing us into minibuses and metrobuses that are full to the brim and sending us to work at the crack of dawn. As the government comers us with unhappiness, they drag us towards hopelessness and despair.
        We must resist the government that decides when we may sleep and when we must wake, that snatches our morning sun and pushes us towards darkness and despair in order to win back our bodies and minds. We must find the courage to defy those who would turn us into blind and deaf, unknowing and unfeeling individuals and break out of this complacency and cornered-ness.

We are being cornered by panic
       The broadcasting prohibitions that follow exploding bombs, the unfounded accusations after suspicious packages are found and bomb threats are made, the people who choose or are forced to choose to stay away from crowded places, the dollars that are exchanged in order to “prevent a crisis,” the people who dream of running away from the land that is oppressed by war, death and economic crises… 
        In the land we live in, the government dominates the individual with fear and panic, it incapacitates, comers and in time, annihilates. As the government enforces this state of fear and panic in all public areas, the individual loses control, becomes vulnerable and is cornered into the annihilation imposed by the rulers.
       Our lives are cornered into the grip of crises or death, and our days are spent looking for a way out of fear and panic, out of this cornered-ness.

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When Criticism Is A Crime.

       The state’s survival is dependent on submissiveness and control, hence it will always try to find ways and means of stifling any form of dissent. Anarchist philosophy is based on the creating a state free society, so naturally it goes without saying, anarchist will always be at the sharp end of that state repression. In countries across the globe, anarchist autonomous centres are evicted and trashed, their papers closed down, and in many cases, the supporters imprisoned on trumped up charges. I have always seen Turkey as an extremely repressive state, more so than some of the others in the West. Many years ago I was involved in a campaign in support of a Kurdish lawyer in Turkey, who had been imprisoned for ten years, his crime, editing a Kurdish language magazine in Turkey, the Kurdish language, at that time, being banned in Turkey. Today in Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey things have deteriorated much further down the repression route. Journalists are detained at the slightest hint of criticism of the Turkish state, radio stations are closed if they don’t shower the state and its psychopathic leader with praise. Now they have gone one step further, you don’t have to criticise the Turkish state, you can find yourself in prison if you dare to write an article in support of people in another country struggling to build democracy. This is the nature of the beast, “the state”, they are all dependent on your acceptance of their monopoly on power. Our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, will point to regimes in other lands and label them “repressive”, despotic” and “undemocratic” but they are all just different flavours of the same poison. The state is an authoritarian edifice that will die if the people grasp their freedom, and freedom will die of we allow the state to flourish.
This from Freedom Press:

Meydan issue 30.

       The editor of Meydan Gazette in Istanbul was jailed for a year and three months on December 22nd for “propagandising the methods of a terror organisation” in a free-speech case which dragged on for nearly a year.

        Hüseyin Civan and the Gazette were taken to court after an investigation by the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor over a December 2015 issue of the paper, which has supported Kurdish revolutionaries fighting in Rojava. The three offending articles were titled “Both Arrival and Departure of State is From Fear” “Banned Until Further Notice” and “Recreating Life.”

       Representing the Gazette and Civan, lawyer Davut Erkan stated that the decision was illegal and would be appealed, if necessary, all the way to the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights.
      In a statement Meydan, which is based just a few streets away from Gezi Park, said:

Our managing editor was charged with “propagandising for the methods of a terrorist organisation employing coercion, violence or threats, through legitimising, praising or encouraging the use of these methods.”
As we emphasised in articles leading up to the investigation, the “State will never be able to lock away the passion and conviction for freedom of the peoples.”
As an anarchist newspaper we know that the free life we believe in can only be created through struggle. We will never give up writing about what we stand for and distributing what we write. We will continue to resist, act and write against oppression, and against these investigations, custodies and arrests.

Journalists have been heavily targeted in the Erdogan government’s post-coup crackdown, which has been heavily skewed against pro-Kurdish media. In October the left-wing Hayatin Sesi TV station was closed along with 24 other TV and radio stations, and hundreds of reporters have been detained, inspiring even some MPs to attempt civil disobedience in protest.
       The draconian measures have even stretched beyond Turkey’s borders, with the issuing of a red alert to Interpol for well-known Turkish-French journalist Maxime Azadi, who was picked up by Belgian authorities for alleged “co-operation” with terrorists on a year-old warrant on December 23rd.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk