{"id":25814,"date":"2018-12-16T22:22:53","date_gmt":"2018-12-16T22:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25814"},"modified":"2018-12-16T22:22:53","modified_gmt":"2018-12-16T22:22:53","slug":"north-cyprus-journalist-takes-on-turkeys-mighty-erdogan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25814","title":{"rendered":"North Cyprus journalist takes on Turkey\u2019s mighty Erdogan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nNICOSIA: Jail time, angry mobs and assassination attempts \u2014 editor Sener Levent has paid a price for challenging Turkey\u2019s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and authorities in breakaway northern Cyprus through his tiny newspaper.<\/p>\n

\nAlongside the stacks of old papers on his desk in northern Nicosia, a luminous screen displays footage from security cameras at his office\u2019s entrances. The cameras are part of protective measures in place since gun attacks in 2011 targeted Levent, who has run the leftist daily Afrika for the past 20 years.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThere is always a price you pay for freedom of expression,\u201d said the 70-year-old Turkish Cypriot, grey hair combed back and sporting a mischievous grin.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe paid this price…. but I believe that a person should get rid of his fears.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nIn January, hundreds of protesters attacked the paper\u2019s offices after it ran an article criticizing a Turkish military offensive against the Kurdish border enclave of Afrin in Syria.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cAfrin, a second occupation by Turkey\u201d after Cyprus, ran the article\u2019s bold headline.<\/p>\n

\nLevent is a native of Cyprus, a Mediterranean island whose northern third has been under Turkish military control since 1974.<\/p>\n

\nTurkish troops invaded that year in response to a coup backed by the military junta then in power in Athens that sought to unite the island with Greece \u2014 a union staunchly opposed by Turkish Cypriots. Only Ankara recognizes the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). It also bankrolls the entity.<\/p>\n

\nAnkara regards the use of the term \u201coccupation\u201d for its deployment of some 35,000 troops in the TRNC \u2014 as well as criticism of its operations against the Kurds in Syria \u2014 as defamation. After Afrika\u2019s article on Afrin, Erdogan called on Ankara\u2019s \u201cbrothers in north Cyprus to give the necessary response.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nThe following day, a crowd of ultranationalists attacked the offices of Afrika \u2014 a tiny daily with a 1,500 circulation in a statelet of around 300,000 people \u2014 as Turkish Cypriot police stood back and watched.<\/p>\n

\nFor media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), \u201cthe hunt for critical media conducted by Erdogan\u2019s government\u201d is so widespread that \u201cwe can fear a collateral effect in Cyprus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nTurkey ranks 157th out of 180 countries on RSF\u2019s 2018 press freedom index.<\/p>\n

\nAnkara holds more than 160 journalists in detention, according to P24, a platform that promotes editorial independence in Turkey.<\/p>\n

\nContacted by AFP, Turkey\u2019s embassy in northern Cyprus refused to comment on \u201cunfounded allegations\u201d that Ankara interferes with the media. But the head of RSF\u2019s European Union and Balkans desk, Pauline Ades-Mevel, said \u201ca freelance journalist critical of Turkey like Sener Levent can fear the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nLevent currently faces three separate trials in north Cyprus for \u201cdefaming a foreign leader,\u201d \u201cinsulting religion\u201d and \u201cpublishing fake news with the intent to create fear and panic among the population,\u201d his lawyer Tacan Reynar said.<\/p>\n

\nHe faces up to five years in prison for the article on Afrin and for republishing a cartoon from social media of a Greek statue urinating on Erdogan\u2019s head captioned: \u201cThrough Greek eyes.\u201d To avoid possible arrest, Levent shuns travel to Turkey, a country he says \u201cis no longer a democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nThe TRNC leadership has said Turkish Cypriots cannot be extradited to Turkey, and Levent also sees EU citizenship as his protection.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThey know in Turkey that they can\u2019t really do what they are doing to their citizens to a European citizen,\u201d said Levent, a seasoned campaigner for reunification with the island\u2019s Greek Cypriot south, an EU member state since 2004.<\/p>\n

\nHis two-decade career has long brought pressure from the Turkish Cypriot authorities.<\/p>\n

\nIn 2002, he and colleague Memduh Ener were jailed for nearly two months after \u201coffending\u201d the Turkish Cypriots\u2019 veteran leader Rauf Denktash.<\/p>\n

\nThe previous year, an assailant who considered Levent a \u201ctraitor\u201d tried on two separate occasions to gun him down.<\/p>\n

\nHe has carried a revolver ever since, but remains undaunted.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe thing that upsets me the most is the silence of people in front of injustice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\nAnd so, every night, the pages of Afrika continue to roll out from an old-fashioned press in Nicosia. But Levent remains modest.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe true heroes are those people who are living today in Syria, in Yemen,\u201d countries blighted by war where \u201cwomen have to face incredible dangers every day.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NICOSIA: Jail time, angry mobs and assassination attempts \u2014 editor Sener Levent has paid a price for challenging Turkey\u2019s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and authorities in breakaway northern Cyprus through his tiny newspaper. Alongside the stacks of old papers on his desk in northern Nicosia, a luminous screen displays footage from security cameras at his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":25815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}