The tragedy that has struck Turkey is also the product of an authoritarian policy

The tra­gic ear­th­quake that has just struck Tur­key once again high­lights the repres­sive nature of the regime and the muzz­ling of fun­da­men­tal free­doms. The col­lec­tives in soli­da­ri­ty with Pinar Selek express their full soli­da­ri­ty with all the people affec­ted by this disas­ter. They stron­gly denounce the Tur­kish state which, in order to conso­li­date its autho­ri­ta­rian power before the next elec­tions, does not shrink from any lie or des­pi­cable ges­ture. They wel­come the fact that the Pen Club of Tur­key’s Duy­gu Ase­na prize has just been awar­ded joint­ly to Gül­se­ren Onan, a great voice of femi­nist resis­tance, to Haluk Levent, who has become a hero in hel­ping the vic­tims of the ear­th­quake, and to Pinar Selek her­self.

No, it was not just « the hand of fate » that struck Tur­key, contra­ry to what Pre­sident Erdo­gan repeats in order to clear his name for the tens of thou­sands of people who died under the rubble of the double ear­th­quake on 6 Februa­ry 2023, in south-east Tur­key and neigh­bou­ring Syria. This ter­rible tra­ge­dy, which plun­ged entire towns into mour­ning, was the result of the poli­cies of an autho­ri­ta­rian state. In a moving text, Pinar Selek expresses her anger and her demand for jus­tice for all the vic­tims :
« Our coun­try is condem­ned to death. To ter­rible, para­ly­sing pain. But we are not para­ly­sed. We are mobi­li­sed by the ener­gy of soli­da­ri­ty. Our anger is great. So great that it can­not be impri­so­ned or exi­led. The last eyes of our dead stand firm in the face of lies, cor­rup­tion and hypo­cri­sy. They want jus­tice. Our dead will always be part of our lives. We will not for­get. So that their eyes are not left open, we will bring jus­tice to life.

In fact, repres­sion has become even tou­gher in these times of catas­trophe. One appal­ling example among many : the day after the ear­th­quake, the govern­ment shut down Twit­ter and other com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools for 12 hours to silence cri­ti­cism of its hand­ling of the cri­sis. In doing so, it depri­ved the vic­tims and the emer­gen­cy ser­vices of any means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion during the most cru­cial hours. The scale of the damage and the num­ber of vic­tims are lin­ked to the fra­gi­li­ty of the new buil­dings, cau­sed by a whole sys­tem of mafia-style agree­ments bet­ween the poli­ti­cal autho­ri­ties, the judi­cia­ry and contrac­tors. They all turn a blind eye.

The relent­less legal harass­ment that has sought to break Pinar Selek for 25 years is the fruit of this same repres­sive, unjust and anti-demo­cra­tic poli­cy. The cam­pai­gn that we are conti­nuing to wage in soli­da­ri­ty with her is part of the essen­tial col­lec­tive effort to loo­sen the gene­ral stran­gle­hold that is suf­fo­ca­ting the people of Tur­key. The stakes are high. What is at stake is the free­dom to think, to write, to exer­cise one’s cri­ti­cal facul­ties and to live in a coun­try that takes care of eve­ryone.

The Coor­di­na­tion of col­lec­tives in soli­da­ri­ty with Pinar Selek