Altaylı: 'Interviewing Öcalan is not something to be ashamed of, it is good journalism'

Photo: Abdullah Öcalan and Fatih Altaylı

Click to read the article in Turkish

Journalist Fatih Altaylı responded to those who are circulating and criticizing his photograph with PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan during an interview he made in 1998 in a column article he wrote today in Habertürk. 

Altaylı wrote in his article, "It is always the same photograph. It is a photograph taken with Abdullah Öcalan on a table in 1998. They think I will be annoyed by this photograph. 

"Nothing hidden"

"I am one of the very few number of journalists who interviewed Abdullah Öcalan," he added. "Mehmet Ali Birand, Cengiz Çandar, and if I am not mistaken, Hakan Aygün. And a little later, the general manager of İhlas news agency interviewed him. 

"Since these interviews were made in places controlled by Öcalan, of course, all of us had meals there. The records of all these interviews are also present in the archives of the state. 

"Öcalan also said in the interview I made that the then Prime Minister [Necmettin] Erbakan sent him a representative; and also that the state of Turkey contacted him a couple of times through intermediaries.

"Thus, this photograph that you always bring up does not reveal anything hidden. It is an interview made in order to be published. It is not something to be ashamed of, it is good journalism."  (TY/PE)