Police Raid on Journalists Zarakolu, Keskin, Koçali
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Following the police raid on Özgür Gündem daily, police have raided the house of the daily’s reporters Filiz Koçali and Eren Keskin.
Filiz Koçali, like Eren Keskin, was not at home at the time of the raid.
Police have also launched a raid into the apartment of Sinan Zarakolu, the son of publisher, columnist and journalist Ragıp Zarakolu, who was registered at this address.
It has been reported that Ragıp Zarakolu was not at his son’s apartment, and that the police have broken in the apartment and seized his books.
Zarakolu has announced the incident on the social media website Facebook as; “I protest against Özgür Gündem daily being shut down and the barbarous police raid into my son’s apartment”.
The police had also raided the daily’s former Editor-in-Chief Eren Keskin’s house. Filiz Koçali, like Eren Keskin, was not at home at the time of the raid.
About Eren Keskin
Attorney Keskin is a columnist at the Özgür Gündem and founder of the Legal Aid Bureau Against Sexual Harassment and Rape in Custody.
She served as Co Editor-in-Chief at the Özgür Gündem. She carried out the duties of Human Rights Association (İHD) Deputy Chair and Istanbul Branch Director.
She was granted many awards as a rights defender: Aachen Peace Prize (2004), Theodor Haecker Political Courage and Honesty Prize (2005), and a symbol figure in the fight against impunity on November 23 International Day to End Impunity (2013).
About Filiz Koçali
She writes at the Özgür Gündem daily. She was among the candidates for the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Aydın MP position in the 25th term.
Koçali was born in İstanbul on January 22, 1958. She graduated from Çamlıca Kız Lisesi (Çamlıca Girls School) and İstanbul Academy of Economics and Commercial Sciences, Press College.
She worked at the magazines of Kadınca, Kim and at bianet. She wrote articles in Söz, Yeniden Özgür Gündem, and Sosyalist Demokrat newspapers. She was a board member at Sosyalist Feminist Kaktüs magazine. She was among the founders of Gazete/Pazartesi magazine, exclusive to women.
She entered political life by joining the student movement in 1976. In order to participate in the rising laborer movement at that time she worked as a laborer at Altın Yıldız and Arıkol factories.
She took place in the human rights movement after the September 12 coup. She was one of those who started sit-in protests of the Saturday Mothers/People against the disappeared in custody.
About Ragıp Zarakolu
Ragıp Zarakolu was born in 1948 on Heybeliada, the second largest of the Prince Islands, in İstanbul. He started publishing with his wife, Ayşe Nur Zarakolu in 1977. He never abandoned his struggle for “popularizing respect for different ideas and cultures in Turkey” despite pressures, his books being seized or destroyed, heavy fines and being sent to prison. Zarakolu serving as the President of Publishers’ Union of Turkey Committee of Free Publishing has worked on Kurdish question and condition of minorities in Turkey.
Zarakolu lastly was arrested together with his son Deniz Zarakolu within the scope of Group of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK) case* in 2011. He remained in prison until April 2012. (HK/EKN/TK)