Actress and activist Lale Mansur has said the government, which has managed to silence artists, is currently trying to intimidate and suppress academics, in an exclusive interview with the Özgür Düşünce daily on Sunday.
Lale Mansur, a prominent actress, has also taken part in many civil society initiatives seeking to end human rights violations. She was herself previously tried on the charge of thought crime at the State Security Courts (DGM).
Criticizing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's remarks in which he said the Kurdish peace process has been shelved, Mansur claimed the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has shelved its conscience. “We could not enter Sur [in Diyarbakır]. We listened to Sur locals. There were two fathers who tried to take the bodies of their killed sons. They went on a hunger strike. [The governments] used to fight for power over people who were alive, but now it is doing so with dead bodies.” Sur has been under curfew since Dec. 2.
The actress, noting that artists are afraid to object to government practices violating human rights and rule of law, said: “I can't stand that. There are artists who are deeply frightened. I'm familiar with trials at the DGM [and] I know what happened in those courts.”
The DGMs, which were established in 1973, had been used by the state to criminalize various opposition groups, including mostly the Kurds and political Islamists, through vaguely worded laws. The courts were abolished by the AK Party through a constitutional amendment in 2004.
When asked what she thought regarding an investigation of Beyazıt Öztürk, the host of the popular “Beyaz Show” talk show, for “spreading terrorist propaganda” after a caller spoke about the situation in the Southeast, Mansur said the caller, Ayşe Çelik, had only complained about the deaths of civilians in the Southeast. Mansur added that there was nothing in Çelik's speech praising the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) terrorist organization, saying, “She accused neither the state nor the AK Party.”
Çelik, after introducing herself to the host of the talk show as a teacher, expressed her frustrations, saying the media is not accurately portraying the conflict in southeast Turkey and that children are dying due to clashes between security forces and the terrorist PKK.
Following the show's airing on Jan. 8, the Bakırköy Chief Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation into Öztürk and Çelik for allegedly spreading terrorist propaganda.
The actress stated that academics who are critical of the AK Party's practices are being threatened and intimidated by the government, adding that although several investigations had immediately been opened into scholars who recently signed a statement criticizing the government's actions in the Southeast, prosecutors only took action against a gang leader, Sedat Peker, after receiving dozens of complaints. Peker had said he will take a shower with the blood of the academics who had signed the statement.
Mansur claimed that both the PKK and the Turkish state want to escalate the clashes because they both mobilize their voters through violent acts. While condemning both, Mansur warned that a crucial distinction must be made: “I pay may taxes to the state, not to the PKK. The state is financing its actions [including those in the Southeast] with our taxes. I do not want to be part of that crime [killing civilians in zones under curfew]. We must hold the state accountable for its actions.”
