Hearts and minds

Our own trip got off to a similarly convivial start with lunch in the officers mess in Diyarbakir. This was a building I had picked my way around warily during my years of reporting from the region and which I had not visited previously or since. The person I sat next to was witty and informative and full of insights into the geopolitics of what (in that cold winter) seemed to be an impending war against Saddam Hussein. So when the name of Çetin Doğan came up this week in the press as the general in charge of an enormous exercise to bring about the overthrow of the elected government with some really violent dirty tricks, I thought it rang a bell. I summoned up the story I had written for The Times, and lo and behold…

The trip took us to Sirnak and beyond, places whose pain and conflict I had witnessed in the early 1990s. When I returned to Istanbul I wrote in my column for the Sabah newspaper my hope that things had really changed and that people would have the freedom to talk about the recent past. “The fear in Sirnak is not being able to call for reconciliation without being accused and intimidated by both sides,” I wrote at the time. The result was not quite what I anticipated. The public prosecutor was not impressed by my column and asked that I be imprisoned for six years for causing the military to be held in disrepute. My subsequent trial attracted a fair amount of publicity even though I was never in real danger of being tossed into jail. Indeed, by the time I appeared in the dock I had already been dismissed from Sabah at the direct request (I later learned) of the National Security Council (MGK) for yet another column. My conclusion from these experiences was not anger at the judiciary, which tried me fairly under a stupid law, but my Turkish newspaper, which did not even report on the case.