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Let us examine the most spectacular case to date: the curious case of Mustafa Balbay.
I do hope you read his story in today’s paper. A colleague (daily Cumhuriyet) and a suspect in the Ergenekon case, Balbay, earlier taken into interrogation for alleged activities for being part of a terrorist organization with the aim of overthrowing the constitutional order and toppling the government, was recently detained again.
Immediately after the arrest, protests were heard: How dare you arrest a man who does his job, some columnists objected. Some of Balbay’s documents were taken to the prosecutor’s office and the protesters argued that he was entitled to keep secret documents at home. What’s wrong with that? some of his colleagues asked. Then, the entire episode developed into an action: A group of columnists gathered some days ago in what they call a "historic act" at Cumhuriyet and signed Balbay’s books for the public. "We are all Balbay!" they declared. According to the Press Council’s chairman, Oktay Ekşi, this act was to "defend the freedom of expression."
Then, on Monday, the Tempo weekly published the diaries of Balbay. He thought he had deleted them before the police raid and was surprised when the police told him that they had "saved" the entire text.
It is a document of shame: As you can read today, the diaries tell how deeply a "journalist" was involved in clandestine activity — as an accomplice, not as a covert reporter — to provoke top military officials to a coup.
"We are all Balbay," claimed the signatories: Ironically, it is true. The tragic fact is that when I look at them, I see only a mental impasse. The precedent they set in their capacity as leaders of journalistic organizations allows the invasion of Balbays to continue.
By the way, Chairman of the Press Council Ekşi is well known for his constant efforts in the 1990s to issue report after report to refute international organizations as CPJ, Reporters sans frontières, etc., which published lists of jailed journalists. Ekşi fully devoted his energies to tell them they were "terrorists," not "journalists." Those poor colleagues worked for small, leftist and fundamentalist journals. They were not entitled to be Balbays.
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