OK, so he’s not really “our” man, he’s Inter Press Service’s (IPS’s) man in Turkey, but the articles of Jake Hess, as was reported by a number of media outlets, his writings have appeared on Antiwar.com.
But who is this 25 year old New Hampshirite and why does it matter? Jake Hess was arrested on Wednesday, nearly a week ago, on terrorism charges in Turkey.
From Hess’ writings one can see that he is passionate about human rights and critical of the Turkish government, but a terrorist? Not hardly. Still, Hess was interrogated for days by the Turkish police because his name showed up on a list of pro-Kurdish activists linked with the KCK, an umbrella group which includes a number of banned groups including the PKK.
According to Hess, the interrogations focused exclusively on his articles, including the one that appeared on Antiwar.com, and he was told he is “harming Turkey’s image” with his writing.
When the US offered to intervene on his behalf Hess really did a gutsy thing though, he told them to leave him alone. In a quote he told the diplomats “It would be hypocritical to support an American journalist who is persecuted for human rights journalism while at the same time supporting the Turkish policy of criminalizing Kurdish political activists.”
Prosecutors are seeking to have him deported from the country now, and his lawyer says he will likely be expelled in a week to 10 days. In the meantime he remains in custody in Turkey simply for writing analysis pieces that were a little too critical for the Turkish government’s taste.
While the pure-hearted human rights fundamentalism rejects any consideration other then their passion, reality does have a ways of intervening. In September, a critical referendum has a potential of breaking the last of the power base that generals have in Turkish political establishment. With them, a great number of judicial cronies that generals nurtured, could be undone as well. Turkish nationalism — here called islamic — may just seriously undermine the "internationalist" (not secular, as we call them) generals. It is the system of deep state, the generals, that kept Turkish public opinion against Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, orthodox religion — all the red herrings for mass manipulation. The anti-general government has done a number of things to change the Kurdish paradigm, such as amnesty program and others. Every time, some nasty event would insure that these political moves had to stop, as the generals would exploit them to show the government "weak" on Kurdish terrorism. Jake was usefull to generals — whether he knew it or not.
Sorry, but the guy was interrogated on suspicion of having links with an internationally recognized terrorist organization. The guy clearly seems to have terrorist links, and Turkey did the right thing by interrogating him, as would every democracy do. He is now being deported, and is NOT jailed. The US would (and should) do the same, if they suspected of such links. That the guy seems to write some "low quality" articles with the level of an elementary school student (just search his articles on Google) doesn't change the fact that he should be interrogated if suspected of terrorist links.
Turkey actually passed China and Cuba in curtailing Press Freedom. Since 2010 they're the undisputed champion.
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