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International outrage and charges of “viciousness” and “outright autocracy” have followed Sunday’s imprisonment of Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s top political rival, the popular Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, who is seen as Erdogan’s likeliest opposition challenger in upcoming national elections. The corruption charges levied against İmamoğlu, a member of the Republican People’s…
Ukraine Conflict and Peace Negotiations Over the past month, the international community has focused on initiatives to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. On March 18, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump held a lengthy phone conversation discussing the prospects for ending hostilities that have persisted for more than three years. Despite the […]
Turkey has deported Belgian media worker Chris Den Hond, banning him from entering the country for ten years – a repressive attitude that’s becoming all too common in Western-aligned states today. And they didn’t even tell him why.
The Canary spoke to video-journalist Chris Den Hond to find out more about his experience.
Chris Den Hond: “they did not give a reason”
Speaking about his ordeal in Turkey, Chris Den Hond said:
I arrived in Istanbul airport on Sunday March 16 and at the passport control they did not let me through. Instead they brought me to a police control room where they said: “Your entry on Turkish territory is denied. You are blacklisted and banned for 10 years.” They did not give a reason.
Despite this, he has an idea of why the Turkish state wants to keep him out of the country:
I am convinced that this 10 year ban is linked to my stories in Rojava at the end of January 2025. In Kobane the people celebrated the 10 years of liberation from Daesh. I am almost sure that the delegation members and journalists present in Kobane have been put on a black list. Because other journalists, activists and members of parliament who were not in Rojava can enter Turkey without a problem.
The multi-ethnic but largely Kurdish area of northern Syria (aka Rojava) has been at the forefront of the fight againstDaesh (Isis/Isil) for over a decade. In 2014, Turkish forces looked on from across the border as Daesh forces advanced on the city of Kobanî. The resistance of left-wing revolutionaries, however, attracted the world’s attention, forcing it to offer limited strategic support. They eventually defeated Daesh in Kobanî, and across the north of Syria. And Turkey has sought in the following years to complete the job Daesh couldn’t.
Turkey’s role in Syria following Assad’s defeat
Turkish-led mercenaries have long been active in northern Syria, committing war crimes in numerous occupied areas. But amid the collapse of the Assad regime in 2024, they took the opportunity to advance further into Rojava, with Western complicity. Syria’s new government appeared to reach a deal with Rojava’s defence forces last week but, shortly after, the new draft constitution for the country faced criticism from Rojava for promising the same kind of “centralised, authoritarian structures that have historically dominated the country”.
Chris Den Hond suspects Turkey’s involvement in the Syrian regime’s apparent backtracking. Talking about his ban from Turkey, he said:
The reason of this ban, a rather radical measure, is certainly the panic, or high level fear of the Turkish authorities of the possible success of Rojava, or the democratic experience in the North and East of Syria. The recent handshake between Mazlum Abdi, SDF general, and Ahmed Al Sharaa has been seen by the Turkish regime as a slap in their face. Just two days later, the text of the transitional constitution proves it: it is the opposite of the declaration signed by Mazlum Abdi and Al Sharaa. So Turkey is doing everything to jeopardize an agreement that would grant a kind of autonomy to the Autonomous Administration in Syria.
Author and whistleblower Carne Ross has called Rojava “an egalitarian feminist, ecologically-conscious society”, and many see it as an alternative political model that can help to break away from the division and authoritarianism of the past. Its inspiration in the philosophy of Abdullah Öcalan is problematic for Turkey, however, because Öcalan is a longstanding political prisoner in a high-security Turkish jail. Nonetheless, Öcalan made a unilateral call for peace recently, sparking hopes that Turkey’s war against Kurdish communities may come to an end.
Den Hond is sceptical about Turkey’s intentions, though. As he told us:
I have the same worries concerning the recent declaration of Abdullah Öcalan in favor of the start of a peace process. The Turkish regime wants to keep the control on the implementation of this peace declaration and is at this moment not making any concrete steps to diminish the repression on journalists, elected mayors and human rights activists.
Chris Den Hond: “treated like a terrorist threat for my journalist work”
Having faced the repression of the Turkish state himself, Chris Den Hond insisted:
I admire a lot the courage of Kurdish and progressive Turkish journalists who are on a daily basis harassed, sometimes imprisoned and judged for years, simply because they are doing their job as journalists and trying to produce news that is not pleasing the Turkish authorities. If Turkey wants to join the European Union, as 20 years ago, it should respect the “Copenhagen criteria”, which means: liberation of political prisoners, end of repression against journalists and activists, end of evicting democratic elected mayors, submitting the role of generals to the government and so on.
He also stressed that his current ban is something new, asserting:
I have done stories in Turkey and Turkish Kurdistan for 30 years: Newroz, HADEP mayors, Noam Chomsky in Diyarbakir. It was not easy, I was arrested many times with hotel arrest, but I have never been entry denied in Turkey.
He added that:
On the plane back to Paris, the Turkish police ordered the Turkish Airlines employees to transfer me to the French police. Three policemen waited for me at the exit of the airplane. Friendly, but again an identity control. I felt treated like a terrorist threat for my journalist work.
Den Hond is now safely back home. But Turkey’s behaviour adds to a worrying trend of increasing political persecution of journalists in Western-allied states in recent months, particularly in relation to their reporting of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a self-declared “crusader” who believes the United States is in a “holy war” against the left, China, and Islam.
In his 2020 book American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free, Hegseth vowed that, if Trump could return to the White House and Republicans could take power, “Communist China will fall—and lick its wounds for another two hundred years”.
Hegseth declared that the Chinese “are literally the villains of our generation”, and warned, “If we don’t stand up to communist China now, we will be standing for the Chinese anthem someday”.
In Hegseth’s conspiratorial worldview, Chinese communists and the international left are conspiring with Islamists against the United States and Israel, which are sacred countries blessed by God.
This January, a Turkish court sentenced Sofya Alağaş, a Kurdish journalist and elected co-mayor of Siirt municipality, to six years and three months in prison on charges of membership in a terror organization. “I honestly don’t know how it will end,” Alağaş told Truthout. “The sentence was not a legal decision but a political one. If the Turkish state takes some steps towards democratization…
Harrowing story of ‘ES’, fleeing persecution to seek safety in US, shines light on judges who grant claims at exceptionally low rates – or not at all
At an immigration court in Pearsall, Texas, in front of a judge, government attorneys and a court interpreter, ES shakily recounted the darkest moments of his life.
He explained how he had been arrested seven years ago in Turkey, amid his government’s crackdown on followers of Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen. The police officers who detained him accused him of being involved in a terrorist movement, and demanded he reveal the names of his associates, he said.
Istanbul, March 3, 2025— Turkish authorities should free Halk TV editor-in-chief Suat Toktaş and drop the charges against him and four colleagues, whose trial is due to open on March 4, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday.
An Istanbul court arrested Toktas on January 26 after pro-opposition Halk TV broadcast a conversation between its journalist Barış Pehlivan and an expert financial witness. The court said Halk TV had secretly recorded the two men’s telephone conversation and it had publicly named the witness to put pressure on him. Four other Halk TV staff were placed under judicial control and banned from foreign travel.
“Suat Toktaş and his four Halk TV colleagues must not be jailed for airing an interview that the government disagreed with. The public deserve to hear all sides of this story, which is of national importance and involves a top Turkish politician,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Authorities should immediately halt their prosecution of Halk TV and instead take a positive step towards improving Turkey’s dismal press freedom record.”
Pehlivan’s interview took place after Istanbul’s opposition Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu hosted a news conference where he named the witness, who he alleged had filed biased reports in numerous politically motivated lawsuits against opposition-controlled municipalities. The witness told Pehlivan that the mayor’s allegations were false.
The interview was aired on a program hosted by Seda Selek, with Serhan Asker as director and Kürşad Oğuz as program coordinator.
All five journalists were charged with violating the privacy of communication through the press and influencing those performing judicial duties, a crime for which the prosecution has requested up to nine years in prison. Pehlivan and Oğuz face an additional charge of recording non-public conversations between individuals and could be jailed for up to 14 years, according to the indictment, reviewed by CPJ.
CPJ’s email to Istanbul’s chief prosecutor requesting comment did not receive a response.
Turkey: fascistic – but we’ll still do a deal with them
In recent weeks, the Turkish state detained 282 people including lawyers, journalists, and LGBTQ+ campaigners. A range of organisations were targeted including members of the Peoples’ Democratic Congress (HDK), Democratic Regions Party (DBP), Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), Labor Party (EMEP), Socialist Refoundation Party (SYKP), Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) and Green Left Party.
Negotiations are currently underway with Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain for Turkey’s acquisition of the Eurofighters in a deal reportedly worth approximately $5.6bn. France meanwhile has agreed to sell Turkey MBDA Meteor air-to-air missiles for the fighters. In the UK, BAE Systems – who announced annual profits of £3bn last week – will be the main beneficiary.
This latest clampdown is part of ongoing repression against Kurdish and other opposition voices in Turkey. Since the local elections in 2024, Erdoğan has replaced ten mayors with trustees from his ruling AKP party. In Van, in the Kurdish majority southeast, this has led to widespread protests and repression that included detaining 40 people, including 5 children.
According to a Freedom House report published this week, Turkey is amongst the top 10 countries that has experienced a sharp decline in freedoms over the last decade.
Alongside this latest round of domestic repression, Erdoğan has continued his deadly assault in Rojava – the autonomous Kurdish-majority region of north east Syria. Between 2019 and 2024, Turkey carried out more than 100 airstrikes on oil fields, gas facilities and power stations, cutting off electricity to over one million people and violating International Humanitarian Law. Turkey is also carrying out regular airstrikes in Iraq, killing four civilians in January.
‘Unconscionable’
Campaign Against Arms Trade media spokesperson, Emily Apple, said
It is unconscionable that this Eurofighter deal is still being talked about. Not only is Turkey an authoritarian, human rights abusing regime domestically, it is committing war crimes in Rojava.
This deal is about lining the pockets of arms dealers while Kurdish communities across the region face bombardment and repression from Erdoğan’s fascistic regime.
We need to stand in solidarity with the Kurdish community and show that there’s massive public opposition to this deal now before it is too late.
After decades of brutal repression at the hands of the war-criminal Turkish state, things suddenly seem to be looking more hopeful for occupied Kurdish communities. Because political prisoner Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has unilaterally called for an end to the group’s conflict with Turkey. Regional developments and some advances in Kurdish rights reportedly convinced him that armed resistance doesn’t make sense anymore and “therefore, the PKK should be dissolved”.
Other PKK leaders have previously insisted that they will respect Öcalan’s wishes. And Kurdish communities around Turkey and beyond have shown their excitement about the prospect of peace.
The Turkish government allowed the main pro-Kurdish Democracy and Equality of Peoples Party (DEM) to visit Öcalan several times in recent weeks, marking an apparent preparation for Öcalan’s statement. But only the coming days and weeks, following Öcalan’s call for peace, will reveal how committed Turkey is to really ending its hostility towards Kurdish communities.
How sincere is the Turkish regime’s change in strategy?
Like Israel, Turkey is a key Western ally with a long record of ethnic cleansing and illegal occupation. And it has recently intensified efforts to force Kurdish-majority communities into submission. The Turkish army is NATO’s second-largest, and has committed numerous war crimes in recent years in an attempt to destroy the left-wing, Kurdish-led Rojava revolution in northern Syria that was key in defeatingDaesh (Isis/Isil). And like Israel, Turkey has sought to justify its own campaign of terror by calling its enemies terrorists. The twist, however, is that Rojavan forces haven’t even attacked Turkey.
The Turkish regime’s problem with Rojava is that it drew its left-wing ideology from Öcalan, whose PKK began to fight a war of resistance against the Turkish state in the 1980s after decades of anti-Kurdish repression. Because Turkey claims the PKK are terrorists, its Western allies do too (though the PKKnever attacked Western targets). Along with its allies in Rojava and elsewhere, the PKK has longcondemned all attacks on civilians. And European courts have criticised the political weaponisation of the ‘terrorist’ designation.
In the 1990s, the PKK clarified that “we want to live within the borders of Turkey on our own land freely”. Butcentralised states like Turkey oppose this type of self-governance. And along with its military crimes, the Turkish regime has long repressed legal electoral groups at home that have sought to defend Kurdish rights, which it continues to do today. For this reason, there are still significant doubts about Turkey’s sincerity in resolving its longstanding Kurdish question. But because the country’s ruling party suffered a big blow in 2024’s local elections, a change in tactics (however disingenuous) is understandable.
The key role of Syria in pushing Turkey to the table
Geopolitical manoeuvring in the region may well be a factor pushing Turkey to seek less hostile relations with Kurdish communities. Because with a highly controversial group with links to Al-Qaeda now ruling Syria, Turkey’s attacks on Kurdish people seem more ridiculous than ever. As former British diplomat Carne Ross recently told the Canary:
I don’t believe really in designating groups as terrorists, and therefore kind of putting them beyond the pale where you won’t talk to them or deal with them. The PKK represents something real which is the need for self-defence of the Kurdish people in Turkey.
Turkey has also faced some recent political opposition from within the US over its attacks on Rojava because Washington understands how important Rojava’s Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were in defeating Daesh, and maintains strategic relations with the SDF as a result. This is particularly relevant as Daesh has been “making a comeback” following the overthrow of the Assad regime. Meanwhile, the US is only tentatively suspending sanctions on Syria as the new ultra-conservative government tries to prove its servility to Western interests.
The Turkish regime, on the other hand, has ideological affinity with Syria’s extremist rulers and is looking to become a key player in the post-war order. The Syrian government has often excluded Rojava from talks amid tense ongoing negotiations, possibly as a result of Turkish interference. And Turkey may indeed have used this as a bargaining chip to encourage Öcalan’s call to dissolve the PKK.
Whether the current hopes of peace in occupied Kurdistan bloom into something lasting or not, new efforts to bring peace between Turkey and Kurdish communities in the region certainly seem to represent an important and necessary step in the right direction.
Entering the field of robotic autonomous systems in 2019, HAVELSAN has built a platform ecosystem that includes unmanned aerial, ground, and naval vehicles. The company has now introduced another unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for use by security forces. Following the BAHA UAV, HAVELSAN has developed BULUT, a reconnaissance and surveillance UAV, in line with the […]
ASELSAN will present new land and weapon solutions including ALKAR artillery and mortar systems, ASAF and ATOM smart ammunitions, and YENER ground-penetrating radar to global audiences for the first time at IDEX 2025. ASELSAN, Türkiye’s leading defense company, is set to make its largest debut to date at IDEX & NAVDEX 2025, taking place in […]
South Korea’s Hanwha Aerospace has completed the acceptance tests for a domestically built 1,000-hp diesel engine to be equipped with the K9 Thunder 155mm self-propelled howitzer (SPH), the company announced on 12 February. The company added that the year-long testing program, which took place in South Korea, Egypt and other undisclosed countries, included extensive field […]
Twenty-three human rights organizations have called for the immediate release of İstanbul Bar Association executive board member Fırat Epözdemir, who was arrested last week over alleged ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Media and Law Studies Association reported February 3, 2025,
Advocacy groups condemned his detention as unlawful and part of a broader crackdown on human rights defenders and legal professionals in Turkey.
The Human Rights Defenders Solidarity Network (İHSDA) issued a statement denouncing Epözdemir’s arrest and urging authorities to drop the charges. The statement, signed by multiple rights organizations, emphasized that targeting lawyers and human rights advocates with judicial harassment is unacceptable.
Epözdemir was arrested Saturday by an İstanbul court on charges of “membership in an armed terrorist group” and “disseminating terrorist propaganda.”
Prosecutors in İstanbul accuse Epözdemir of joining a PKK-linked WhatsApp group in 2015, during the peak of clashes between Kurdish militants and Turkish security forces in the country’s predominantly Kurdish southeast.
The PKK has waged an armed insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, a conflict that has left more than 40,000 people dead.
Epözdemir’s legal team has faced severe restrictions in accessing case files due to a confidentiality order, preventing them from reviewing the evidence against him. Authorities also imposed a 24-hour ban on lawyer visits without providing a clear justification, raising concerns of due process violations.
The joint statement criticized the prosecution’s reliance on a decade-old public event and phone conversations as grounds for Epözdemir’s arrest, calling the charges baseless and politically motivated.
His detention, rights groups argue, is an attack on the legal profession and human rights advocacy in Turkey. They linked his arrest to broader efforts to suppress dissent, noting that members of the İstanbul Bar Association have faced mounting pressure after issuing a statement regarding two journalists killed in Syria.
“Lawyers and bar associations must not be criminalized for their advocacy and defense of fundamental rights,” the statement said. “We reject all attempts to silence human rights defenders and demand the immediate and unconditional release of Fırat Epözdemir.”
Among the signatories were the MLSA, the Human Rights Association (İHD), Civil Rights Defenders, the Turkish Human Rights Foundation (TİHV) and numerous other civil society organizations.
Norway’s Kongsberg Maritime announced on 23 January that it has secured a contract to supply its advanced propulsion and manoeuvring solutions for the two Indonesian Navy KCR-70 Fast Attack Crafts being built by Sefine Shipyard in Türkiye. According to the company, the equipment package being supplied for the attack crafts includes a propulsion system that […]
“The evidence brought against Kurdish journalist Safiye Alagaş consists of her professional journalism and does not support accusations that she was a member of a terrorist organization, as indicated by one of the judges’ dissenting from the guilty verdict,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Turkish authorities should not fight Alagaş in her upcoming appeal and stop equating journalism with terrorism.”
Alagaş, a former news editor for the pro-Kurdish JİNNEWS, was charged with being a member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey has designated as a terrorist organization. The case began in June 2023, and the evidence against her was based on her journalism, according to CPJ’s review of the indictment and monitoring of her first hearing.
Alagaş was elected co-mayor of the southeastern province of Siirt during the trial. Lawyers for Alagaş said their client would not have been found guilty if she lost the mayoral election.
One of the three judges in Alagaş’s case dissented from the guilty verdict, adding that the requirements defined by the law for the crime to have been committed were not fulfilled, according to CPJ’s review of the verdict.
CPJ’s email to the Diyarbakır chief prosecutor did not receive a response.
Kongsberg Maritime has secured a contract to supply advanced propulsion and manoeuvring technology for two new KCR-70 Fast Attack Craft for the Indonesian Navy. These vessels are currently under construction at the Sefine Shipyard in Türkiye. The Kongsberg Maritime equipment package includes an innovative propulsion system that combines twin controllable pitch propeller (CPP) Promas systems for […]
A United Nations special rapporteur on Thursday 16 January 2025 condemned Turkey’s continued use of counterterrorism laws to imprison human rights lawyers and activists, calling it a violation of international human rights obligations.
Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, expressed alarm over the long-term detention of nine Turkish human rights lawyers and activists who were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on what she described as “spurious terrorism-related charges.”
The group includes eight members of the Progressive Lawyers’ Association (ÇHD) who were arrested between 2018 and 2019 and convicted under Turkey’s Anti-Terror Law: Barkın Timtik, Aytaç Ünsal, Özgür Yılmaz, Behiç Aşçı, Engin Gökoğlu, Süleyman Gökten, Selçuk Kozağaçlı and Oya Aslan. They were sentenced to up to 13 years in prison in what has been widely criticized as an unfair trial, known as the ÇHD II trial.
Another arrestee, lawyer Turan Canpolat of the Malatya Bar Association, was imprisoned in 2016 based on the testimony of a client who later admitted he had been coerced. Canpolat was convicted of alleged links to the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, which Ankara accuses of orchestrating a coup attempt in 2016, and sentenced to 10 years in prison. The Gülen movement denies involvement in the coup.
Canpolat was detained in 2016 after responding to a police search at a client’s residence, only to find himself accused based on doctored evidence and coerced testimony. Despite the dismissal of related charges against others implicated in his case and the recanting of key testimony, he remains in prison. His conviction was based on his legal representation of companies later closed by emergency decrees after the coup, a move critics argue criminalizes standard legal work. International legal groups have denounced his imprisonment as a miscarriage of justice, calling for his release.
All nine lawyers are currently held in high-security prisons, and Canpolat has reportedly been kept in solitary confinement for nearly three years without a disciplinary order, a practice the UN expert found “extremely disturbing.”
Lawlor has raised concerns about their cases since the beginning of her mandate in 2020, but Turkey has continued to criminalize their work. “I remain dismayed that the criminalization of their human rights work has not stopped,” she said.
She urged Turkish authorities to comply with international human rights law and guarantee fair appeal hearings for the detained lawyers. “I am ready to discuss this further with Turkish authorities,” she added.
The Turkish government has repeatedly been criticized for using broad anti-terror laws to silence political dissent and imprison journalists, lawyers and activists. Since the 2016 coup attempt, Turkey has arrested thousands on terrorism-related charges, often based on tenuous evidence such as social media posts or association with banned groups.
International human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have condemned Turkey for what they describe as politically motivated prosecutions and the erosion of due process. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled against Turkey in multiple cases, finding that it has violated the right to a fair trial and engaged in arbitrary detention.
There was absolutely nothing stopping them. But not one single member of Western mainstream media ever visited a bomb site in Lebanon to verify whether Israeli claims it was a Hezbollah base or missile site were true because they knew the answer is negative, as I found across dozens of bomb sites, and that is not the narrative they are paid to promote.
But when a narrative they are paid to promote came to the fore, they flocked to Damascus – driving right past the bombed civilian homes, ambulance centres and schools of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley to get there – to promote Syria’s new Israel-, U.S.A- and Turkey-sponsored “democratic” government of entirely “reformed” HTS (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham) Wahhabists.
In ‘potentially trailblazing’ decision, European court of human rights finds country engaging in illicit deportations
The European court of human rights has found Greece guilty of conducting “systematic” pushbacks of would-be asylum seekers, ordering it to compensate a woman forcibly expelled back to Turkey despite her attempts to seek protection in the country.
In a judgment described as potentially trailblazing, the Strasbourg-based tribunal awarded the complainant damages of €20,000 (£16,500), citing evidence that the frontline EU state was engaging in the illicit deportations when she was removed.
When Seattle-based journalist and activist Arthur Pye visited North and East Syria in 2023, he was stunned by what he observed at an organizing meeting in Serdem, a refugee camp of internally displaced people. Many of the refugees had been participants in the Rojava Revolution — a Kurdish-led, multiethnic, feminist, directly democratic movement involving more than 4 million people — in the…
As foreign powers look to shape Syria’s political landscape after the toppling of the Assad regime, the country’s Kurdish population is in the spotlight. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continues to threaten the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Turkey regards as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party militants who have fought an insurgency against the Turkish state for 40 years. Turkey’s foreign minister recently traveled to Damascus to meet with Syria’s new de facto ruler Ahmed al-Sharaa, the head of the Islamist group HTS. “Turkey is a major threat to Kurds and to democratic experiments that Kurds have been implementing in the region starting in 2014,” says Ozlem Goner, steering committee member of the Emergency Committee for Rojava, who details the persecution of Kurds, the targeting of journalists, and which powerful countries are looking to control the region. “Turkey, Israel and the U.S. collectively are trying to carve out this land, and Kurds are under threat.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Istanbul, December 23, 2024 – The Committee to Protect Journalists urges Turkish authorities to release journalists who were jailed in Istanbul on Sunday and allow the media to report freely.
On Saturday, Turkish authorities detained several dozen people, including journalists, at a protest against the December 20 killing of Kurdish journalists Jihan Belkin and Nazim Dashdan, who hold Turkish citizenship, in a suspected Turkish drone strike in northern Syria on December 20. The next day, an Istanbul court placed five journalists and two media workers in police detention pending trial and placed five other journalists under judicial control.
“The Turkish government is attempting to control the flow of news about Syria by intimidating the press, as evidenced by the arrest of journalists at a protest, the house arrest of Özlem Gürses, and other legal actions,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Turkish authorities must immediately release the imprisoned journalists and media workers, free Gürses, and allow members of the media to do their jobs without fear of retaliation.”
The journalists and media workers arrested at the Istanbul protest are:
Enes Sezgin, social media manager for the pro-Kurdish daily Yeni Yaşam
Osman Akın, news editor for Yeni Yaşam
Can Papila, designer for Yeni Yaşam
Serpil Ünal, reporter for the leftist outlet Mücadele Birliği
Journalists were also detained at a similar protest in the eastern city of Van Friday but they were released.
State owned Anatolia Agency reported on Sunday that the chief prosecutor’s office in Istanbul is investigating independent news website T24 over its coverage of the reactions to the two journalist killings in Syria. Authorities are also investigating Seyhan Avşar, a reporter with independent news website Gerçek Gündem, on suspicion of terrorism propaganda and knowingly spreading misinformation for social media posts on Belkin and Dashdan.
In a separate incident on Saturday, an Istanbul court put journalist Özlem Gürses under house arrest pending trial on suspicion of demeaning the Turkish military over her comments on her YouTube channel regarding Turkey’s military presence in Syria. Gürses continues broadcasting from her home in Istanbul.
In another incident, the chief prosecutor’s office in Istanbul opened an investigation into the Bar Society of Istanbul for suspicion of terrorism propaganda and spreading misinformation due to its statement on Saturday calling for an investigation into the suspected Turkish drone killings of Belkin and Dashdan, and the release of journalists and others detained in Istanbul at the protest against their deaths.
CPJ emailed the chief prosecutor’s office in Istanbul for comment but did not receive a reply.
Syrian rebel commanders have boasted that the US military helped them overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad.
They acknowledged this in a report published by major British newspaper The Telegraph, titled “US ‘prepared Syrian rebel group to help topple Bashar al-Assad’”.
The article revealed that a rebel group armed, trained, and funded by the United States, based in the south of Syria, collaborated with rebranded al-Qaeda in the north to jointly topple the Syrian government.
According to the report, the US military helped to create a Syrian militia called the Revolutionary Commando Army (RCA).
NATO’s second largest army Turkey is currently leading attacks on northern Syria that have caused a severe humanitarian crisis. And its primary target is what former British diplomat Carne Ross calls “an egalitarian feminist, ecologically-conscious society” which has been at the forefront of the fight againstDaesh (Isis/Isil) for over a decade.
The Canary spoke to Ross to see why he believes this war should be a much bigger news story, what it says about Western racism and “post-imperial arrogance”, and what the world needs to do to stop it.
Turkey in Syria
After the invasion of Iraq, Ross gave “secret evidence to the Butler Inquiry” and resigned his post as a British diplomat. He knew the government had lied, failed to pursue alternatives to military action, and broken UN resolutions. And this experience profoundly changed his political views. In 2015, he visited the multi-ethnic but largely Kurdish area of northern Syria (aka Rojava), eager to find out about the “bottom-up self-government” developing there in the middle of the country’s brutal war. Vice News previously called the process in Rojava “the most feminist revolution the world has ever witnessed”.
Ross described his experience of the revolution to the Canary, saying:
there is such a system of bottom up self-government starting at the communal or the village level, where people take decisions for themselves in a very egalitarian atmosphere which is women-led. Women are co-chairs of all forums, including the system of justice…
He added that:
systems of self-government are often described as implausible in the West. But there in Rojava, it’s actually happening.
And he emphasised:
I think it’s an extraordinary political experiment that’s underway there that deserves to be known about and preserved and protected against aggression.
Turkey’s war against Rojava in Syria
NATO member Turkey, however, “has long seen the Kurds as an internal enemy” and sees Rojava “as a threat”. The state long oppressed its Kurdish population, and this sparked resistance from the PKK. It has also pushed its allies to designate the PKK as terrorists. But as Ross stressed:
I don’t believe really in designating groups as terrorists, and therefore kind of putting them beyond the pale where you won’t talk to them or deal with them. The PKK represents something real which is the need for self-defense of the Kurdish people in Turkey.
The Rojava Revolution shares ideological roots with the PKK, but as Ross stated:
The Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF], which is the force that defends Rojava, has stated that it is separate from the PKK.
In reality, Ross insisted, “Rojava is run by Syrians for Syrians”:
they’re not a kind of Kurdish separatist movement. They are, as I’ve described, a democratic and inclusive dispensation which is defending itself, has defended itself, particularly against Isis, for the last decade or so.
But if people in Rojava have been a key part of the on-the-ground resistance to Daesh, why have Western nations participating in the fight against Daesh allowed Turkey to attack them?
Western complicity with Turkish war crimes
Regarding the West’s shameful failure to challenge Turkey in any meaningful way, Ross said:
it is extraordinary that the West is willing to tolerate extensive human rights, abusive abuses, political repression, and violent, including violent repression by Turkey, and now attacks on northeast Syria where the the local militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces, have been an ally to the West in fighting Isis.
He called it:
a strange kind of alliance when your allies let you be attacked by another country without response… so ‘ally’ would certainly be an inappropriate term in that regard.
And he explained that:
there’s a traditional reason for that, which is Turkey is seen as a kind of bulwark at the eastern end of NATO, a pivot between East and West, and therefore a vital ally to have in the Western alliance. There is a more insidious, pernicious reason now, which is Turkey has agreed to stop the flows of refugees across the Mediterranean and Aegean into the EU, and the West more generally, in return for Western acquiescence in, you know, authoritarianism in Erdogan’s Turkey.
Considering if there’s any red line Turkey could cross, he added:
I don’t know what the limits of Western hypocrisy are… I find the West’s position on Turkey, and what the Turks have done to the Kurds both in Turkey and in Syria, extraordinary and reprehensible. And yet they continue to do it. It’s one of those… platitudinous eternals of Western foreign policy, a bit like ignoring the rights of Palestinians and allowing them to be killed in large numbers. There’s a degree of racism in it. There’s a degree of post-imperial arrogance in it. The idea that you’re kind of moving chess pieces around the world to ensure stability for your allies, and thus for yourself.
Ross is fully aware of the impact Israel’s impunity in Gaza has had, too. As he stressed:
Turkey will have noticed the impunity with which Israel has carried out war crimes in Gaza. The US has… basically allowed this to happen – indeed, has fueled it by providing huge amounts of weaponry to Israel – and what Turkey will have learned is that you can get away with it. You can get away with abuses and war crimes of the kind that Israel has practised, and that Turkey is now practicing by aggressively attacking northeast Syria and Kurdish regions. And particularly in the dark latter days of the Biden administration, where there’s literally weeks left of that administration, it’s a very good moment to take advantage of the turmoil in Syria to pursue your own national ends, which is clearly what Turkey is doing.
Why the media should be focusing more on Turkey’s campaign of ethnic cleansing in Rojava, Syria
Simply on a humanitarian level, Ross asserted:
The SDF currently controls about 40% of eastern Syria. That’s a very big chunk of the country, and if there is turmoil and war there that will affect a great many people. There’ll be a humanitarian disaster. There already is a humanitarian disaster in terms of the people who have been expelled from the Aleppo region by Turkish-backed militias – the Syrian National Army [SNA], as they’re called… Tens of thousands of people have been ethnically cleansed effectively from the Aleppo area.
Adding to his comment about racism and “post-imperial arrogance”, meanwhile, he addressed journalistic bias in the mainstream media, insisting that:
it is absolutely the responsibility of journalists to reflect the facts accurately, not to ignore human suffering, not to ignore certain areas, not to give different moral weights to different peoples… Evidently, they have done in the Israel-Palestine case, where you know individual Israelis are named and given personal histories, their families are interviewed… but Palestinians are just reduced to numbers talked about in the tens of thousands of deaths. There is a clear inequality between the way different groups of people are talked about, and I think a minimum requirement of journalism is to treat people equally.
He believes that most people absolutely would respond with empathy if that had the full story, and said:
we respond to the suffering of others when that is presented to us. Of course we won’t, respond if it is not presented to us, if it is ignored as is the case currently in northeast Syria, where what is going on in northeast Syria is being ignored in the discourse of what has happened to Syria.
Rojava is an alternative to the divisive and destructive status quo
On the left in particular, Ross argued that Rojava is a real sign of hope. Apart from being “one of the only examples in the world today of what a truly self-governing… society looks like”, he said:
I believe it’s a plausible alternative to the way we organize things in the West. In the West, we have top-down government, which is in basically the enforcement mechanism for capitalism, which is basically an exploitative economic system where one human exploits another and where we exploit nature. I believe in a more collaborative, shared economy of benefit to all where we practise mutual aid to support one another, and the concomitant of that is, it’s shared. Government where everybody has an equal say, rather than a hierarchy which is intrinsically corruptible, because when the few take decisions for the many, access to the few is always limited, so that access will always be won by the most powerful, the richest. And that’s what we see in our society today, where the interests of the most powerful and the most wealthy warp the whole system in their direction, and government has diverged from what popular wishes truly would be if they were expressed in a more egalitarian setting.
He added:
And that’s the lesson of Rojava, that they are doing that in Rojava and creating an egalitarian, feminist, ecologically conscious society in wartime. It’s not an easy thing.
So what can we do to help?
Ross doubts that the West is willing to take meaningful action to stop Turkey’s attacks. But he knows that polite requests don’t work. Speaking about autocratic Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he said:
He’s a bit like [war criminal Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. Diplomatic rhetoric is water off a duck’s back to him, just as it is to the Israelis. You can say you want ceasefires and restraint all you want. What matters is force and coercion. And I’m not saying use military force on Turkey, but tell them in no uncertain terms that relationships will be damaged if they continue in this vein.
Only legislation, sanctions, or other concrete, tangible changes would have an impact. But that’s unlikely to come unless there is massive pressure from voters in the West. This could be demonstrations, writing to MPs, or writing to the media. As he said:
Write to your MP. It’s not nothing to write to your MP. MPs take notice of that. They have to forward the letters to ministers for reply… As much as possible, talk about it. Demand that the press cover it much more. I’ve been writing to the Middle East editors of various newspapers and broadcast media saying, ‘Why aren’t you covering this? This really matters.’
Sulaymaniyah, December 20, 2024 —The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the killing of journalists Jihan Belkin and Nazim Dashdan in northern Syria in a suspected Turkish drone attack on their vehicle and calls for an investigation into whether they were targeted for their work.
“Journalists are civilians and must be protected at all times,” said CPJ Advocacy and Communications Director Gypsy Guillén Kaiser in New York. “We call on Turkey’s defense authorities to conduct a thorough investigation into the killings of journalists Jihan Belkin and Nazim Dashdan in Syria. It is imperative to ensure those responsible are held accountable.”
The journalists were killed in a suspected Turkish drone attack on their vehicle on the road between Tishreen Dam and the town of Sarrin, in northeastern Aleppo, accordingtomultiplenewsreports and Belkin’s employer, who spoke to CPJ.
Belkin, 28, was a correspondent for the Hawar News Agency (ANHA), while Dashdan, 32, worked as a freelance journalist for multiple outlets including ANHA, Firat News Agency, and Ronahi TV. Both journalists were inside a car while moving between locations as they were covering the recent clashes between Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Turkish-backed opposition forces Syrian National Army (SNA), which has been supported by Turkish airstrikes during its offensive. Their driver, Aziz Haj Bozan, was also injured in the attack.
ANHA is a news agency affiliated with the Kurdish administration of northeast Syria and broadcasts in six different languages. ANHA, Firat News Agency, and Ronahi TV are pro-Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey designates a terrorist organization.
ANHA manager Akram Barakat told CPJ via messaging app that the incident took place around 3:20 pm. “They were returning to Kobani city after covering the fighting near Tishreen when a Turkish drone deliberately targeted their vehicle, killing them instantly,” he said. Barakat said that Belkin had been working as a journalist in northern Syria since 2017, and Dashdan since 2014. “Both had consistently reported on wars and conflicts in the region for various outlets,” he said.
Barakat told CPJ that the journalists’ vehicle was clearly marked as “Press,” but that Turkey “continues to disregard” international laws.
“Turkish drone strikes have repeatedly targeted journalists in our region while the international community remains silent,” Barakat said. “We urge international organizations, human rights groups, and the global community to take immediate action to stop these attacks on journalists and hold the perpetrators accountable. This silence has only exacerbated the dangers faced by journalists in the region.”
CPJ’s email requesting comment from the Permanent Mission of Turkey to the United Nations did not receive a response. The Turkish Defense Ministry website did not provide access to allow CPJ to request comment.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Syria, where tens of thousands of people gathered at the Great Mosque of Damascus for the first Friday prayers since longtime authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad was toppled by opposition fighters.
DAMASCUS RESIDENT: [translated] Hopefully this Friday is the Friday of the greatest joy, a Friday of victory for our Muslim brothers. This is a blessed Friday.
AMY GOODMAN: Syria’s new caretaker Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir was among those at the mosque. He’ll act as prime minister until March.
This comes as the World Food Programme is appealing to donors to help it scale up relief operations for the approximately 2.8 million displaced and food-insecure Syrians across the country. That includes more than 1.1 million people who were forcibly displaced by fighting since late November.
Israel’s Defence Minister has told his troops to prepare to spend the winter holding the demilitarized zone that separates Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Earlier today, Prime Minister Netanyahu toured the summit of Mount Haramun in the UN-designated buffer zone. Netanyahu said this week the Golan Heights would “forever be an inseparable part of the State of Israel”.
On Thursday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for an urgent deescalation of airstrikes on Syria by Israeli forces, and their withdrawal from the UN buffer zone.
In Ankara, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Turkey’s Foreign Minister and the President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Blinken said the US and Turkey would [work] to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State group in Syria. Meanwhile, Erdoğan told Blinken that Turkey reserves the right to strike the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, led by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Turkey considers “terrorist”.
For more, we go to Damascus for the first time since the fall of longtime authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad, where we’re joined by the Associated Press investigative reporter Sarah El Deeb, who is based in the Middle East, a region she has covered for two decades.
Sarah, welcome to Democracy Now! You are overlooking —
SARAH EL DEEB: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: — the square where tens of thousands of Syrians have gathered for the first Friday prayers since the fall of Assad. Describe the scene for us.
Report from Damascus: Searching for loved ones in prisons and morgues. Video: Democracy Now!
SARAH EL DEEB: There is a lot of firsts here. It’s the first time they gather on Friday after Bashar al-Assad fled the country. It’s the first time everyone seems to be very happy. I think that’s the dominant sentiment, especially people who are in the square. There is ecstasy, tens of thousands of people. They are still chanting, “Down with Bashar al-Assad.”
But what’s new is that it’s also visible that the sentiment is they’ve been, so far, happy with the new rulers, not outpour — there is no criticism, out — loud criticism of the new rulers yet. So, I’d say the dominant thing is that everyone is happy down there.
HAYAT AL-TURKI: [translated] I will show you the photo of my missing brother. It’s been 14 years. This is his photo. I don’t know what he looks like, if I find him. I don’t know what he looks like, because I am seeing the photos of prisoners getting out. They are like skeletons.
But this is his photo, if anyone has seen him, can know anything about him or can help us. He is one of thousands of prisoners who are missing. I am asking for everyone, not only my brother, uncle, cousin and relatives.”
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about this mad search by Syrians across the country.
SARAH EL DEEB: This is the other thing that’s been dominating our coverage and our reporting since we arrived here, the contrast between the relief, the sense of relief over the departure of Bashar al-Assad but then the sadness and the concern and the no answers for where the loved ones have gone.
Thousands — also, tens of thousands of people have marched on Sednaya [prison]. It’s the counter to this scene, where people were looking for any sign of where their relatives have been. As you know really well, so many people have reported their relatives missing, tens of thousands, since the beginning of the revolt, but also before.
I mean, I think this is a part of the feature of this government, is that there has been a lot of security crackdown. People were scared to speak, but they were — because there was a good reason for it. They were picked up at any expression of discontent or expression of opinion.
So, where we were in Sednaya two, three days ago, it feels like one big day, I have to say. When we were in Sednaya, people were also describing what — anything, from the smallest expression of opinion, a violation of a traffic light. No answers.
And they still don’t know where their loved ones are. I mean, I think we know quite a lot from research before arriving here about the notorious prison system in Syria. There’s secret prisons. There are security branches where people were being held. I think this is the first time we have an opportunity to go look at those facilities.
What was surprising and shocking to the people, and also to a lot of us journalists, was that we couldn’t find any sign of these people. And the answers are — we’re still looking for them. But what was clear is that only a handful — I mean, not a handful — hundreds of people were found.
Many of them were also found in morgues. There were apparent killings in the last hours before the regime departed. One of them was the prominent activist Mazen al-Hamada. We were at his funeral yesterday. He was found, and his family believes that — he was found killed, and his family believes his body was fresh, that he was killed only a few days earlier. So, I think the killing continued up until the last hour.
AMY GOODMAN: I was wondering if you can tell us more about —
SARAH EL DEEB: What was also — what was also —
AMY GOODMAN: — more about Mazen. I mean, I wanted to play a clip of Mazen’s nephew, Yahya al-Hussein.
YAHYA AL-HUSSEIN: [translated] In 2020, he was taken from the Netherlands to Germany through the Syrian Embassy there. And from there, they brought him to Syria with a fake passport.
He arrived at the airport at around 2:30 a.m. and called my aunt to tell her that he arrived at the airport, and asked for money. When they reached out to him the next day, they were told that air intelligence had arrested him.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Mazen’s nephew, Yahya al-Hussein. Sarah, if you can explain? This was an activist who left Syria after he had been imprisoned and tortured — right? — more than a decade ago, but ultimately came back, apparently according to assurances that he would not be retaken. And now his body is found.
SARAH EL DEEB: I think it’s — like you were saying, it’s very hard to explain. This is someone who was very outspoken and was working on documenting the torture and the killing in the secret prisons in Syria. So he was very well aware of his role and his position vis-à-vis the government. Yet he felt — it was hard to explain what Mazen’s decision was based on, but his family believes he was lured into Syria by some false promises of security and safety.
His heart was in Syria. He left Syria, but he never — it never left him. He was working from wherever he was — he was in the Netherlands, he was in the US — I think, to expose these crimes. And I think this is — these are the words of his family: He was a witness on the crimes of the Assad government, and he was a martyr of the Assad government.
One of the people that were at the funeral yesterday was telling us Mazen was a lesson. The Assad government was teaching all detainees a lesson through Mazen to keep them silent. I think it was just a testimony to how cruel this ruling regime, ruling system has been for the past 50 years.
People would go back to his father’s rule also. But I think with the revolution, with the protests in 2011, all these crimes and all these detentions were just en masse. I think the estimates are anywhere between 150,000 and 80,000 detainees that no one can account for. That is on top of all the people that were killed in airstrikes and in opposition areas in crackdown on protest.
So, it was surprising that at the last minute — it was surprising and yet not very surprising. When I asked the family, “Why did they do that?” they would look at me and, like, “Why are you asking this question? They do that. That’s what they did.” It was just difficult to understand how even at the last minute, and even for someone that they promised security, this was — this would be the end, emaciated and tortured and killed, unfortunately.
AMY GOODMAN: Sarah, you spoke in Damascus to a US citizen, Travis Timmerman, who says he was imprisoned in Syria. This is a clip from an interview with Al Arabiya on Thursday in which he says he spent the last seven months in a prison cell in Damascus.
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: My name is Travis.
REPORTER: Travis.
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: Yes.
REPORTER: So, [speaking in Arabic]. Travis, Travis Timmerman.
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: That’s right.
REPORTER: That’s right.
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: But just Travis. Just call me Travis.
REPORTER: Call you Travis, OK. And where were you all this time?
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: I was imprisoned in Damascus for the last seven months. … I was imprisoned in a cell by myself. And in the early morning of this Monday, or the Monday of this week, they took a hammer, and they broke my door down. … Well, the armed men just wanted to get me out of my cell. And then, really, the man who I stuck with was a Syrian man named Ely. He was also a prisoner that was just freed. And he took me by the side, by the arm, really. And he and a young woman that lives in Damascus, us three, exited the prison together.
SARAH EL DEEB: I spent quite a bit of time with Travis last night. And I think his experience was very different from what I was just describing. He was taken, he was detained for crossing illegally into Syria. And I think his description of his experience was it was OK. He was not mistreated.
He was fed well, I mean, especially when I compare it to what I heard from the Syrian prisoners in the secret prisons or in detention facilities. He would receive rice, potatoes, tomatoes. None of this was available to the Syrian detainees. He would go to the bathroom three times a day, although this was uncomfortable for him, because, of course, it was not whenever he wanted. But it was not something that other Syrian detainees would experience.
His experience also was that he heard a lot of beating. I think that’s what he described it as: beating from nearby cells. They were mostly Syrian detainees. For him, that was an implicit threat of the use of violence against him, but he did not get any — he was not beaten or tortured.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Sarah, if you could also —
SARAH EL DEEB: He also said his release was a “blessing.” Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: If you could also talk about Austin Tice, the American freelance journalist? His family, his mother and father and brothers and sisters, seem to be repeatedly saying now that they believe he’s alive, held by the Syrian government, and they’re desperately looking for him or reaching out to people in Syria. What do you know?
SARAH EL DEEB: What we know is that people thought Travis was Tice when they first saw him. They found him in a house in a village outside of Damascus. And I think that’s what triggered — we didn’t know that Travis was in a Syrian prison, so I think that’s what everyone was going to check. They thought that this was Tice.
I think the search, the US administration, the family, they are looking and determined to look for Tice. The family believes that he was in Syrian government prison. He entered Syria in 2012. He is a journalist. But I think we have — his family seems to think that there were — he’s still in a Syrian government prison.
But I think, so far, we have not had any sign of Tice from all those released. But, mind you, the scenes of release from prisons were chaotic, from multiple prisons at the same time. And we’re still, day by day, finding out about new releases and people who were set free on that Sunday morning.
U.N. Calls on Israel to Stop Bombing Syria and Occupying Demilitarized Zone https://t.co/iHNIkKKOrs
I want to turn to Gaza. Tell us about the Palestinians searching for their family members who went missing during raids and arrests by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip. And talk about the lack of accountability for these appearances. You begin your piece with Reem Ajour’s quest to find her missing husband and daughter.
SARAH EL DEEB: I talked to Reem Ajour for a long time. I mean, I think, like you said, this was a pivot, but the themes have been common across the Middle East, sadly. Reem Ajour last saw her family in March of 2024. Both her husband and her 5-year-old daughter were injured after an Israeli raid on their house during the chaotic scenes of the Israeli raids on the Shifa Hospital.
They lived in the neighborhood. So, it was chaotic. They [Israeli military] entered their home, and they were shooting in the air, or they were shooting — they were shooting, and the family ended up wounded.
But what was striking was that the Israeli soldiers made the mother leave the kid wounded in her house and forced her to leave to the south. I think this is not only Reem Ajour’s case. I think this is something we’ve seen quite a bit in Gaza. But the fact that this was a 5-year-old and the mom couldn’t take her with her was quite moving.
And I think what her case kind of symbolises is that during these raids and during these detentions at checkpoints, families are separated, and we don’t have any way of knowing how the Israeli military is actually documenting these detentions, these raids.
Where do they — how do they account for people who they detain and then they release briefly? The homes that they enter, can we find out what happened in these homes? We have no idea of holding — I think the Israeli court has also tried to get some information from the military, but so far very few cases have been resolved.
And we’re talking about not only 500 or 600 people; we’re talking about tens of thousands who have been separated, their homes raided, during what is now 15 months of war in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: Sarah El Deeb, we want to thank you for being with us, Associated Press investigative reporter based in the Middle East for two decades, now reporting from Damascus.
Next up, today is the 75th day of a hunger strike by Laila Soueif. She’s the mother of prominent British Egyptian political prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fattah. She’s calling on British officials to pressure Egypt for the release of her son. We’ll speak to the Cairo University mathematics professor in London, where she’s been standing outside the Foreign Office. Back in 20 seconds.
