'A Decade of Freedom of Expression - Second Book: 2012 - 2022'

The new book by the IPS Communication Foundation called "A Decade of Freedom of Expression - Second Book: 2012 - 2022" is being introduced today in an event at bianet in İstanbul today. 

The new book which updates the book published in 2012, discusses freedom of expression focusing on the media, and gives readers the chance to "re-read" the developments that left their mark in the political and social memory of Turkey in the last decade. 

Gökçer Tahincioğlu, who prepared the book describes it as follows:

"This book was prepared so that all these what we lived through could be recorded. That Cemile Çağırga was recorded, that the Gezi Park resistence was recorded, that the coup and the state of emergency was recorded, those who died and those who survived, those who feel guilty because they survived are put on the record, so that those who are announced as terrorists, those taken into custody, those who are tortured are recorded, so that the institutions that are hallowed out, the so-called independent institutions serving those in power are put on the record." 

The IPS Communication Foundation keeps track of the journalists who are killed, attacked, the news outlets that are closed, the reports that are banned, the legal pressure on the people, the amendments made in the anti-terror law, the violations of freedom of expression, attacks on reporters and media, the restrictions on the right to information and the freedom of journalist to make news in Turkey, and the struggle against all of these since 2001. The BIA Media Monitoring Reports kept for 21 years lay the foundation for this book. 

Unlike the first book, journalists have also described what they lived through in this second book. 

Alican Uludağ, Aysun Cerek, Ayşegül Doğan, Bahadır Özgür, Burcu Karakaş, Erol Önderoğlu, Fikret İlkiz, Gökçer Tahincioğlu, Kenan Şener, Levent Pişkin, Mehtap Ceyran, Mehveş Evin, Özlem Akarsu Çelik, Sibel Yükler, Timur Soykan, Ulaş Karan, Yetvart Danzikyan and Yıldız Tar contributed to the book with their articles. 

"This is your story"

IPS Communication Foundation coordinator Evren Gönül writes, introducing the book on the back cover, "Not even six months had passed from the date of publication of the first book and I saw, within a large crowd on the Taksim square, that two live-broadcast vehicles were turned upside down and "penguin media" written on one of them. For a moment I thought, "Will it be possible to fit the next ten years into a single book?"

"When I look back now, I see that we use no more the term "mainstream" but "the pool media" which describes the relation of the media with the power and capital openly. We know that independent journalism itself is a resistence today in the current media atmosphere, where auto censorship is the norm. 

This book could be written by, and thanks to those who resist to do journalism; but what is being told about is your story."(VC/PE)