One morning last May, Can Dündar, a Turkish journalist, was standing outside an Istanbul courthouse, waiting for a judge to reach a verdict on his guilt or innocence, when a man rushed toward him with a gun. A year earlier, Dündar’s newspaper, Cumhuriyet, a daily favored by Turkey’s secular left, had published video footage of truckloads of weapons being smuggled to Syrian rebels by Turkish state intelligence agents. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose government had denied that it was supplying the rebels, was outraged and vowed that Dündar, then editor-in-chief, would “pay a heavy price.” Dündar was arrested and charged with aiding a terrorist organization and with espionage, among other crimes. “Traitor!” the gunman shouted as he fired two shots in Dündar’s direction. Dündar’s wife, Dilek, along with a member of parliament, grabbed the gunman, and video of the scene shows the three in an odd, lumbering half-embrace until the man is ordered to drop his gun. After the shooting, Dündar looked a bit ruffled but was uncannily composed. “I am fine. I am fine,” he told reporters. “Nobody should worry. Please be calm. There is nothing wrong. My wife jumped on him. So I want to congratulate her.” Glancing at Dilek, he smiled. “Thank you. Thank you.”
When the court reconvened, a short time later, one of the judges apologized to Dündar for the shooting and then sentenced him to five years and ten months in prison for revealing state secrets. Dündar appealed the conviction and, free, pending the outcome, left for Barcelona to work on a book. At that point, Dündar was hopeful that he could get a fair trial in Turkey and intended to return. But, last July, his plans changed. President Erdoğan declared a state of emergency in response to an attempted coup, leading to a crackdown on ostensible opponents: he eventually fired more than a hundred thousand public workers, jailed opposition politicians and journalists, and arrested judges, two of whom sat on the constitutional court. Convinced of the utter impossibility of a fair trial, Dündar took up an offer to come to Germany to write a column for the German newspaper Die Zeit. He arrived in Berlin with little more than a suitcase full of summer clothes.
I recently met Dündar in his Berlin office, situated among the drab, monolithic apartment blocks of the former East Germany. He had a gray beard and longish gray hair, and an easygoing, jokey demeanor despite his recent troubles. He told me that he didn’t know if the man who shot at him had intended to kill him or just wanted to intimidate him, but, either way, the shooting was indicative of the increasingly dangerous climate for independent journalists, or for anyone unwilling to conform to Erdoğan’s increasing authoritarianism. Dündar told me that even a cafeteria worker at the Cumhuriyet office in Istanbul had been jailed for several days after making an offhand statement about how he would never serve tea to Erdoğan. A policeman assigned to guard the newspaper overheard the remark and informed his superiors, according to a Reuters account that cited the worker’s lawyer. “That’s the way you get promoted in Turkey,” Dündar said, with an amused laugh.
Turkey, Dündar told me, has never been a particularly safe place for journalists, writers, and activists, but, depending on the results of a referendum scheduled for this Sunday, their lives could become even more difficult. Turks will vote on whether to accept constitutional changes that would consolidate power under the Presidency and bring the nation closer to one-man rule. The proposed amendments would do away with the office of the Prime Minister, empower the President to appoint the country’s highest judges, and grant him authority to dissolve parliament and legislate by decree. Erdoğan has sought to justify the changes by arguing that Turkey’s parliamentary system is too weak to handle security threats at home and abroad. He has tried to rally the support of his religious, conservative base by demonizing “no” voters as those who want to divide the country. He has also stoked enmities abroad. After Dutch and German authorities blocked Turkish politicians from holding rallies in support of the constitutional changes in front of Turkish expatriate populations in their countries, Erdoğan accused German Chancellor Angela Merkel of employing “Nazi measures.” In a speech earlier this month, Erdoğan railed against the E.U. for not making Turkey a member, referring to it as a “crusader alliance.” The tactic seemed intended to unify Turks behind him in righteous anger. As Dündar put it, “He needs enemies.”
Dündar’s journalism career has lasted nearly four decades. During that time, he has been aware that a critical article could trigger retaliation from any number of groups: the Army, the police, nationalists, Islamists. “You name it, we have it,” Dündar said. On the wall near the entrance of the Cumhuriyet building, he told me, hang portraits of five writers for the newspaper, all murdered in recent decades. In the mornings, when he arrived for work, the pictures seemed to be telling him, “This is the future waiting for you.” Still, he can’t remember conditions for the press ever being as bad as they are today. At the time of our talk, eleven colleagues from his former newspaper were in jail, including his successor as editor-in-chief. A few weeks later, Turkish authorities also arrested an accountant and a courier at the paper. Earlier this month, nineteen Cumhuriyet employees were indicted on charges of supporting terrorist organizations. Turkey has become the world’s foremost jailer of reporters. More than a hundred journalists in Turkey are imprisoned, and around a hundred and fifty media outlets have been liquidated by decree, according to Reporters Without Borders. Even those independent outlets that continue to operate struggle to function. “You have to think twice, at least, about every word you use,” Dündar told me. “Many of our friends gave up, gave up fighting, gave up writing. Some say, ‘It’s nonsense under these circumstances to do journalism.’ Some say, ‘I’m scared and I don’t want to write.’ And some start writing bullshit.”
With Turkey’s critical media outlets stymied or shut down, voices for “no” in the referendum have been drowned out. In February, the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet stopped publication of an interview with Orhan Pamuk in which he explained why he would vote “no.” Around the same time, İrfan Değirmenci, a television presenter on one of the country’s most popular channels, was fired after he tweeted in opposition to the amendments. After arriving in Berlin, Dündar started a Turkish-and-German-language news Web site called Özgürüz (Turkish for “We Are Free”); the Web site, which Dündar refers to as “media in exile,” was promptly blocked in Turkey.
Dündar, who lives in Germany as a Writers at Risk fellow of the German center of PEN International, has become a well-known figure in Germany, appearing on German political talk shows, giving newspaper interviews, and writing columns in which he has urged German politicians to take a harder stand against rights violations in Turkey. He’s a bit uncomfortable with the role. “I became a political figure. It’s beyond my control, unfortunately,” he told me. “I’m not complaining, but it was not the position I was seeking.”
Dündar told me that he hasn’t seen his wife since he arrived in Germany. She tried to visit in September, but authorities at Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport confiscated her passport. (The shooter, Dündar told me, with a tinge of bitterness, is out of jail and still has his passport.) Dündar said that he will not be able to go home to see his wife as long as Erdoğan is in power. He is optimistic, however, that Erdoğan’s reign is more tenuous than many people assume. After all, he said, Erdoğan has antagonized the half of the country that did not vote for his party in the last general election, in 2015, and even some former allies have distanced themselves from his “yes” campaign. Despite the surplus of Erdoğan-friendly news coverage in Turkey, Dündar said, polls suggest that the referendum result will be close, and many voters remain undecided. Dündar said there’s a good chance “no” will win, since the polls, he surmises, don’t accurately reflect the views of a significant number of people who, in the current political climate, are afraid to reveal their true intentions. Dündar himself won’t be voting. Though expatriate Turks are permitted to vote, stepping into a Turkish consulate in Berlin to cast his ballot, with a warrant out for his arrest, would not have been good idea. “One vote will be missing in this referendum,” he said.