Harun İlhan
Jan Devletoğlu, who has been practicing journalism for a long time now, has attracted attention with his recent memoirs, “İyi Kötü Ermeni” (good-bad Armenian). Our first question was about the title of the book. He noted that the title can be traced back to his childhood, when he was working in a small store: “My boss Jule sent me to a state office so that I would give bribe money to a manager there. The director took the envelope and told me that Jule is a good Armenian. This influenced me greatly and made me think. I concluded that Armenians are generally bad but that Jule was not one of those bad Armenians. He was a good-bad Armenian.” (Jan Devletoğlu)
The many incidents of discrimination he faced form the main theme and subject of the book. He does not, however, define the book as merely a personal biography, saying: “The name of the book will not change if you narrate the stories of any people who have been discriminated against, regardless of their identities. As I noted in the preface of the book, I am sick of being a good-bad Armenian in my own country.”
We kept talking about discrimination; at some point, we started chatting about his son, Rafi, a name that has its own story. Devletoğlu picked this name to protect his son against discrimination in case he ever chose to live and study in Turkey, because Rafi is a popular name in Islam as well as in other religions. He says: “Given that the state does not consider stopping its discriminatory practices or taking the religion section off ID cards, I needed to take a measure of protection and make sure that the religion of my son would be recorded as Islam. I needed to protect a young individual against biases, stereotypes, discrimination and religious pressure. For me, religion is a personal thing, a decision that should be made by the individual. I believe that what I did was right. I made efforts to do this in the consulate. You cannot have your rights without a fight.”
‘My religion was recorded as Islam on my ID; I was as happy as if I had won the lottery’
Devletoğlu’s religion was mistakenly changed to Islam on his ID when he went to get a new one. He felt as if he had won the lottery, because on his previous ID card the religion section read “Armenian” and “Catholic.” For a brief period of time, Islam superficially eliminated the sense of being part of a lower class or of a minority. According to Devletoğlu, the state had profiled him on the ID card, and for this reason, he was humiliated all the time: “This mistake saved me from discrimination for a while. Now I can take a copy of my ID card and use it in official places and hotels instead of my passport which I preferred, as a more secular ID, in the past.”
‘You cannot publish a report abroad without verifying it through at least two sources’
Of course, I wanted to take the opportunity to ask this veteran journalist about the current state of affairs of Turkish media. He said: “In order to attain the truth in Turkish media, I have to read at least three papers, and throw at least 50 percent of what I read away. So you do the math.”
Devletoğlu maintained that it is quite different to be a journalist abroad, explaining: “You cannot publish a report without verifying it through at least two reliable sources. If you do, and it turns out that the report is falsified, you can no longer do that job. A journalist has to comply with the principles of the profession. When you do not, you become an outcast. The best-selling paper in the UK had to shut down because it violated journalistic principles.”
Yorumlar kapatıldı.