Medial review: turning point, which turning point?

Actress of the Year

In 2004, a Luxembourgish high school graduate received the “Premièreexamen” at the Lycée de Garçons.

After receiving her diploma on stage at the graduation ceremony, she spontaneously goes to the microphone.

She calls out to teachers, parents and classmates: "Here I have proof that I can copy, memorize and keep my mouth shut." Signs of intelligence, just being able to live off caffeine for three weeks and endure the pressures of school and our environment.”

In a radio interview, she compares some teachers to depressed wrecks that lurk in school corridors.

The "Tageblatt" describes her statements as chattering away in the casual schoolyard style.

Elsewhere there is talk of the self-portrayal of a “hobby actress”.

Eighteen years later, The New York Times included her in its "Top Ten Actors of the Year List."

The historical drama "Corsage", in which she plays the emancipated Empress Elisabeth, makes it onto the Oscar list.

When she was asked in 2004 if she wanted to be a teacher, the answer was: "I don't think I'd have a chance of being accepted after all this." Luckily, she turned her hobby into a career.

We will see a lot more from Vicky Krieps, who also has German citizenship and mostly lives in Berlin.

Free, but not free

On November 29, the time had come: after serving his sentence, the Kurdish journalist Nedim Türfent was released.

He was awarded the Musa Anter Prize for journalism in 2015 for his background report on a video showing indiscriminate violence by a Turkish special forces unit against Kurdish construction workers, but was fined the following year by the Turkish judiciary for alleged membership in an armed terrorist group sentenced to eight years imprisonment.

According to Turkey's anti-terrorist law, a journalist can be sentenced to a maximum of two years in prison for his work, but to five to ten years for being a "member of a terrorist organization".

The judiciary is quick to hand the allegation of terrorism, and witnesses are forced to testify, as was the case in the Türfent trial.

Although the only paper available to him in solitary confinement was the labels of water bottles, Türfent continued to write, sending letters and articles outside through his lawyer.

Also poetry, which was "a way out and refuge at the same time".

The release as a turning point?

Türfent, originally an English teacher, had become a journalist to give people "the voice and breath that no one else pays attention to".

He doesn't see his dismissal as freedom.

Freedom is something else, not just “outside four walls”.

The government's attitude towards journalists has not changed either, and the repression has intensified.

Will he still work as a journalist again?

Not until the elections, he says, he's mentally incapable of that at the moment.

In Turkey, the turning point is taking place, if at all,

roads to the sea

Our memory is quite selective.

Most of the time we only remember the good.

That's why we often sink into the well of nostalgia.

But it would be wrong to use this generalization to explain how Turkey's democrats have felt for the past 20 years.

We have lost a lot since Erdogan took office in 2002, above all our voice.

There have been many voices in this country for 20 years, but no polyphony.

In the media, which is 95 percent controlled by the palace, there is no room for dissenters.

Turkey used to be a place where, despite its lack of democracy, there were different opinions on every platform.