Two years ago in June, I wrote an expose on the case of Abdurrahman Gök, on his news story he was able to break thanks to the photographs he had taken, and being where he was as a journalist, and on the state of the two continuing criminal lawsuits: one pertains to the police officer accused of killing of Kemal Kurkut, on March 21, 2017, and the other is the…
Sometimes a line from a poem picks my mind and it seems like the most sensible line to utter to the void of sounds or songs that is left by the meaning draining through a sieve in the face of a very, very interesting times. Despicable times of greed, hypocracy, ignorance, and corruption. So the line keeps repeating itself in my mind and I finally find the will to find…
I share a poem I ran into today while I reminisce on my previous blog which I had kept for about six years.
This is the story of the photographs taken by a journalist, Abdurrahman Gök, on the Newroz day in 2017 in Diyarbakır, Turkey. This is the story of the last moments of Kemal Kurkut, who is shown in these photographs.
Bu yazının Türkçesi de mevcut. Preliminary note: There is a type of writing in academic literature that I began to appreciate a lot: the book review. Researchers write short essays on newly published books by other researchers working in the same field, and these articles are generally published in journals or digests in that field. It generally is a short, tidy article. It aims to locate the scope of the…
This post is also available in English. Ön not: Akademik yazında yeni kıymetini bildiğim bir tür var: kitap incelemesi. Araştırmacılar, kendi alanlarında, benzer konularda çalışan başka araştırmacıların genellikle yeni yayınlanmış bir kitabını inceledikleri, denemeye yakın bir yazı yazar ve bu yazı, alanla ilgili dergilerde veya derlemelerde basılır. Kısa, toparlayıcı bir yazı olur. Dümdüz bir özetten çok, asıl olarak kitabın kapsamını, o araştırma alanında konumlandırmayı hedefler. Alanımda, en azından göz atmam…
for some time now I've been thinking of anger, particularly, the lack of it, in certain situations, and of the reasons why. My question has been: why people are not angry when they should be? What is it that keeps them from being (or appearing to be) angry? Now, I don't have an answer to that. But what I have in mind as anger, as the kind of rage that…
In one previous post titled “journalism in times of mega crises,” I pondered on the state of journalism in the current period of pandemic, during which there are restrictions on movement and the Covid-19 crisis is used as an opportunity by the states to increase surveillance and control. From the beginning, before evolving into a pandemic, the case of the virus Covid-19 came to be publicly known through a case…
Rembrandt moments of photojournalism #1 There is a certain theme of expression in photojournalism in recent years that I’m drawn to; it is more like a "mode" in music, rather than a topic. It is not really about the type of content. It is rather a “gesture to being eternal” that is evoked in those beautiful images of conflict and social upheaval. There is a co-existence of tension and motion…
Among the numerous things that are of concern about the new surge of authoritarianism around the world with the measures put in place against the Covid19 global pandemic, is the case of journalism today. Border closures and measures restricting mobility are already impacting physical access in many regions of the world. In places where the governments were already infamous for curtailing freedom of speech and actions of journalists, the protection…