I want to conduct an exclusive interview with the President...

I concluded my latest column published on 12punto.com.tr, titled “It Was As If the Saudi King Had Spoken”, with these words:

“You will speak for an hour, yet you will find it too much to even defend my Atam (Atatürk), my republic, and my National Anthem, which are under attack, with a single word… And I am supposed to call you ‘My President,’ is that it?

I will not…

If I do, may my tongue be tied, my pen be broken, and my eye sockets be filled with dirt!”

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Some readers have complained, saying, “Regardless of everything, he is the President of this country… What does it matter if you call him ‘My President’ or not?”

They are right; what will happen if I don’t?

But at least, those who will write the “History of Turkish Resistance” one day in the future will be forced to say that, contrary to popular belief, there was no “total surrender” in the country!

Even that is enough!

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Since we have brought up the subject of the President, let us continue:

I have been a journalist for exactly 43 years; I have been a columnist for 24 years. I have carried a yellow press card for 40 years; I have held a permanent press card for 20 years. For the last 21 years of my professional life, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has always been either Prime Minister or President. I am making an open request here: AKP members may not want to see me as a journalist, but I am officially recognized by the state’s official bodies as someone who has been striving for the profession for all these years. I will not beat around the bush:

I want to conduct an exclusive interview with President Erdoğan.

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Since he claims at every opportunity that press freedom in the country has never regressed during his administration; then let him prove it.

Let him take his Vice President, his ministers, his bureaucrats, or his party strategists with him, and let him answer the questions I will ask without dodging them!

I do not define myself as an “opponent.”

I am just a journalist.

Being an opponent is already in the nature of the journalism profession.

Just as you cannot have ayran without yogurt, you cannot be a journalist without opposition.

Those who are “partisan” are not called journalists, but public relations specialists or advertisers!

For this reason, I promise to ask him only “journalistic questions.”

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In the last 21 years, which coincide with his administration, I have only seen Recep Tayyip Erdoğan up close once.

In 2003, during my time serving on the Board of Directors of the Turkish Journalists Association… But he has filed countless lawsuits against me or submitted criminal complaints about me due to the articles I have written.

I will forget them all.

Without any prejudice, with an objective approach, I will remind him of the questions that have been left unanswered or the issues that the public has not been satisfied with over the last 21 years…

That is all!

I will not set a trap, I will not engage in politics.

But I will not nod my head like a pump handle to everything he says, like the so-called journalists he seats at his table on the plane.

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I have lost my job many times because of the anti-press freedom policies he has pursued.

The owners of the newspapers I wrote for were given the harshest penalties. Their schools and homes were demolished; their newspapers and television stations were sold to partisan owners.

The television channels where I produced programs were shut down.

I was left unemployed during my most productive years.

My name was whispered into the ears of all media owners to ensure I was not hired.

Even some comments I shared on the internet to avoid staying silent were met with lawsuits.

I was condemned to hunger and deprivation.

But…

I swear on my journalistic honor that if he accepts my request and says yes to an interview with me, I will suspend all my anger and resentment.

I will put my emotions aside and ask my questions.

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I challenge you…

Since he is so sure that he manages this country very well, let him prove “how democratic and libertarian” a politician he is by giving such an interview before the upcoming local elections, which he and his party attach great importance to…

I have no conditions either…

This is an opportunity for reconciliation with a journalist against whom he has filed dozens of unfair and baseless criminal complaints, opened lawsuits, had fired, and whose livelihood he has played with…

Come on, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whom I do not call “My President”…

You are not afraid of a single journalist, are you…

State the place and time, and I will come.