An award that is as painful as it is a source of pride

Elif Günay
 
The Raif Badawi Journalism Award given by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom was bestowed this year on our reporter Ahmet Şık. The award was presented at a ceremony held at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The independent jury committee announced that it had chosen Ahmet Şık to represent all journalists detained in Turkey due to his importance in the area of media freedom. At the ceremony, which Ahmet Şık, held in detention in Silivri Prison, was unable to attend, Ensaf Haidar, wife of the Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, who has been sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, presented the award to Şık’s lawyer, Can Atalay. Haydar said while giving the award, “Ahmet Şık’s courage moves me greatly. He and Raif are sharing the same fate. Both are in prison for expressing their thoughts.” Can Atalay, in turn, read Ahmet Şık’s message of gratitude as he received the award. Şık said in his message, “As one who has been held hostage for conducting journalism, voicing the truth and expressing his thoughts, while being a source of pride for me to be deemed worthy of this award granted in the name of Raif Badawi, who has been held hostage and tortured in another country also for expressing his thoughts, it is at the same time painful. I would most certainly wish for Raif Badawi to freely express his thoughts on his blog and to be a free person. However, I must state that the struggle that Raif Badawi has waged and his beloved wife Esnaf Haidar has proudly made visible gives us all strength.”
 
Systematic curtailment
 
 
Former German Minister of Interior Gerhart R. Baum, who participated at the ceremony, said that Şık’s case was symptomatic of the current political situation in Turkey. Baum criticised the Turkish government for the disproportionate duress meted out to thousands of people including 170 opposition journalists and writers in the aftermath of the July 2016 coup attempt. Baum went on to mention that this year’s holder of the award, Ahmet Şık, was one of many people who were being prosecuted without any guarantee that the judicial process would function correctly. Baum said, “For as long as human rights and freedoms continue to be curtailed in a systematic manner, Turkey cannot expect to continue the process of harmonisation with European values.”
 
You will be unable to scare us
 
Ahmad Mansour, spokesperson of the Muslim Forum in Germany, said in his address that he described the award holder Ahmet Şık as a courageous man who, even if the truths are disturbing, did not shirk from hunting them down. Mansour, stating in his address that there was a need for “A powerful message to be sent to all radicals,” said, “You will be unable to intimidate us and we will not permit freedom of expression to be curtailed through the use of violence.”