Interview

Pinar Selek: "There is a policy of terror in Turkey" five months before the elections

Pinar Selek, sociologist and Turkish activist who took refuge in France, here in January 2013 in Strasbourg.

AFP PHOTO/FREDERICK FLORIN

Text by: Oriane Verdier Follow

5 mins

For 25 years Pinar Selek has been denouncing legal relentlessness on the part of the Ankara authorities.

The Franco-Turkish sociologist is being prosecuted for having organized an attack, an explosion that experts have nevertheless defined as accidental.

She learned on January 6 that she was again the subject of an international arrest warrant.

Interview.

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RFI: Can you remind us of the main stages of these 25 years of legal proceedings that you are facing?

Pinar Selek:

I have been living in France since 2011. I was first a political refugee and I became French in 2017. This trial has been going on for 25 years, I have been acquitted four times.

Everyone knows that this is a Kafkaesque trial that aims to criminalize the feminist and anti-militarist researcher and activist that I am.

After

, the prosecutor appealed again.

This time, the case was sent to the Supreme Court.

Last June, we learned from Turkish state media that the Supreme Court had decided to convict me.

Finally, my lawyers officially received the information: the Supreme Court annulled the acquittal and sent my case to the Istanbul Assize Court, which in the meantime has changed judges.

A new trial is due to begin on March 31, 2023 and I am now the subject of an international arrest warrant which requires my immediate imprisonment.

The Supreme Court sentenced me to not only life imprisonment, but endless persecution.

Everyone knows that this is a false decision based on false arguments and falsified evidence.

This is why I have always been acquitted.

This trial reflects both the continuity of the authoritarian regime in Turkey, since it began before the current government, but also the configurations of the repressive devices put in place ahead of the presidential elections of June 2023.

The word attack recalls that attributed by the Turkish authorities to the PKK last November.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party has formally denied being the author, but this attack justified the start of a new air offensive against Kurdish forces in Syria.

Do you feel that your case and this situation are part of a single strategy?

Yes of course.

You know, a few days before the assassinations of the Kurds in Paris,

that the year 2023, the year of the electoral deadline, was going to see the multiplication of attacks organized by the “invisibles”.

The Turkish government, in difficulty, adopts the strategy of chaos and feeds on tensions.

I know I'm just a small dot in the big picture of resistance.

Three days after my article, there was

and then, of course, before that, the fabricated attack on Taksim Square in November.

Most thinking people in Turkey immediately understood that the pre-election work had begun.

I believe that we can expect other events of this kind until the elections, perhaps other attacks or other accusations, other criminalizations.

It is a strategy of chaos and terror.

►

Ahead of this historic meeting of the elections, what is your view of your country, Turkey?

I always repeat Antonio Gramsci's famous phrase: “ 

 ”.

Currently, the pessimism of intelligence is obviously stronger, but there is a very great resistance in Turkey.

The prisons are full and we know that everyone can find their way there one day, no one is untouchable.

But despite this context of terror, many people are mobilizing.

There are demonstrations, people move for the trials.

In my case, I learned about the reversal of my acquittal from the Turkish media, but they also spread my word and many people who live in Turkey spoke out in support of me.

It shows that they have not succeeded, that there are weaknesses.

It is these weaknesses that give us hope.

Now, I think that European countries must take a clearer position in relation to Turkey, in relation to all these policies, these violations of freedoms.

Are you worried about this international arrest warrant?

In 2013, when I had just arrived in France, Turkey had already made an extradition request.

They had asked Interpol to put me on the red list.

These requests were rejected because it was clear that this trial was political.

I am very surrounded, I work at the university, I am a lecturer, I have teaching responsibilities, I write articles and participate in many research groups.

On March 31, there will be a large European delegation to represent me at the opening of my trial in Istanbul, many of my French compatriots in particular.

Since I learned of the Supreme Court's decision, support committees have met, I feel protected here in France.

Until today, I resisted so as not to submit to domination, in the face of this science fiction film.

I resisted to continue working on my research, to think deeply.

I wrote a little letter to my friends and told them, " 

 ."

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