Yeni Şafak columnist rebels: 'What is happening to us? Where are we going?'

Journalist and academic Nuray Mert has ended her column writing due to a lawsuit filed against her on charges of "membership in a terrorist organization." She announced this to the public in a farewell piece published on Medyascope on April 10, 2025.

In the aforementioned article, Mert stated that she could no longer continue her long-standing writing activities under the current conditions and announced her decision to stop writing about politics and current developments.

SUPPORT AND CRITICISM FROM YASIN AKTAY

Following this decision by Nuray Mert, notable support came from the ruling party front. Yeni Şafak columnist Yasin Aktay, a former AKP Deputy Chairman and former party spokesperson, wrote an article titled "Nuray Mert and 'membership in a terrorist organization'" on April 12.

Here are the highlights from Yasin Aktay's article:

"Ever since I heard last week that a lawsuit had been filed against Nuray Mert on charges of 'membership in a terrorist organization,' the last 40 years we have lived through in Turkey have been passing before my eyes like a long film strip that I have watched many times. What is happening to us? Where are we going? I sent the news to many friends and asked the same question: what is happening to us? Most of our old mutual friends heard the news from me. They were also in a state of bewilderment.

Many things can be said about Nuray Mert; after all, she is someone with very sharp views and stances that would disturb many people. But perhaps the only thing that cannot be attributed to her, cannot be made to fit her, or even stick to her is 'membership in a terrorist organization' or even 'membership in any organization.' She has an inherently oppositional personality, capable of thinking independently enough that she could never be a member of any organization. As far as I know, in all the platforms she has participated in, she has never refrained from speaking the truth as she sees it, and perhaps because of this, she has a stance that would never allow her to find a place within any structure or organization.

'Always being an opposition' is perhaps the first definition you might hear if you asked her for a phrase that defines her style of politics and expresses herself in life. Indeed, she has also published a book under this title. Personally, it is certainly not a style of politics I agree with. In a discussion, I tried to remind those who expect Islamism to always remain in opposition that, with all its theoretical infrastructure, the Prophet, as the reference for Islamism, never set remaining in opposition as an ideal; on the contrary, there was the Medina experience as much as the Mecca experience. Anyway, this is my own personal opinion, of course, but no one is obliged to agree with this view, least of all Nuray Mert. The reason I mention this difference is not to criticize her on this subject or to prove my own righteousness, but to explain how irrational it is to attribute organizational membership to her.

...

Frankly, we cannot ignore the environment that led Nuray Mert to 'bid farewell' to writing and speaking on political issues today. Of course, it is not possible to say that this environment was created solely by the ruling circles. Indeed, even though Nuray Mert objects to the idiom today, she is practically 'cast out from nine villages.' In fact, I have always had a separate respect for her, thinking that she is not bothered by this situation. A person who is persistent in pursuing their own truths, at the cost of being excluded and paying a price, commands respect no matter what. Where has it ever been seen that a person who insists on their own truths is accepted by everyone?

...

Although today there is no single center or single power that prevents us from speaking, exerts pressure on us, or incites the wrath of lynching. Every group has a world it has created for itself, and in every world, the authority of a different power, pressure, excommunication, and exclusion mechanisms are at work. But undoubtedly, perhaps none of the other villages or power centers are in a position to exercise the 'judicial' power of the state against others, and this creates a serious moral situation that compels everyone with a conscience in a different way.

11 years ago, during the 'Solution Process' that began in 2013, Mert, like many journalists, held meetings with PKK members and shared these with the public. In the atmosphere created at that time, the definition and nature of the crime were reshaped according to that atmosphere, and Mert acted a bit more courageously, relying on the atmosphere of that process in Turkey, and in a way, she stepped forward to take responsibility. Indeed, an acquittal decision was issued in an investigation opened for this same reason, pointing out that it was 'within the scope of the peace process.' Despite this, she will now be tried in a High Criminal Court on charges of 'membership in a terrorist organization' due to this event.

I know that treating this within the scope of the government's effort to silence its opponents makes the diagnosis of our more complex problem even more difficult. If you ask how I know, we now more or less know how the judiciary works during the 22-year rule, from Ergenekon to Balyoz, and from there to the FETÖ cases and subsequently other cases: we have a serious judicial mindset problem in Turkey.

Of course, this is a problem that is shaped and diversified through complex relationships with the government and politics in general. A type of judiciary that determines both the government and politics with a fait accompli while appearing to salute the government is a typical problem. It is a problem that cannot be reduced to the relationship with the government. The judiciary is a power that always creates and operates its own ideology, autonomous power, and behavior.

Ignoring small victims who get caught in the middle while focusing on the main target by considering them as details, a carelessness and lack of diligence that begins by seeing it as normal for the innocent to suffer alongside the guilty, is the greatest murderer of justice. The idea that justified struggles justify burning the innocent along with the guilty, unfortunately, paves the way for those who are more royalist than the king in all these cases, those who try to establish their own power through the judiciary, and leaves us facing grave judicial murders that are impossible to compensate. Justice is not the name of burning the innocent along with the guilty, but the name of a meticulous sensitivity that works to separate the innocent from the guilty despite everything."

WHO IS YASIN AKTAY?

He is the former AKP Deputy Chairman responsible for Foreign Affairs and Human Rights. Aktay, who served as an AKP Siirt MP for the 25th and 26th terms, also served as a chief advisor and party spokesperson for a period. Aktay is also among the four founders of the Justice and Democracy Foundation.

WHAT HAPPENED?

A lawsuit was filed against journalist-writer Nuray Mert in March 2025 on charges of "membership in a terrorist organization." Following the lawsuit, which was based on a photograph taken in the Kurdish region of Syria in 2014, Mert published a farewell piece in her column on Medyascope and decided to end her political writing.

News Source: 12punto