JINHA

NEWS CENTER - Zehra Dogan, painter and journalist for Turkey's only women's news agency JINHA, was imprisoned on Saturday, July 23 in the Nusaybin district of Mardin, which has been under military curfew for the last 5 months. Her paintings are being used by the judiciary as "evidence of membership in a terrorist organization."

The 27-year-old journalist/painter, who won the prestigious Metin Goktepe Journalism Award in 2015, has been following the developments in Nusaybin since the beginning of the curfew. She was one of the few journalists who remained in town in order to continue reporting.

Apart from reporting the developments in Nusaybin, she was also creating paintings of the ongoing war and the stories of the people. Zehra Dogan is the only artist following and painting the war in the Kurdish region of Turkey.

Zehra decided to leave the Nusaybin district and came to Mardin last week. There, she was arrested by police while she was sitting in a cafe with her friends on the night of Thursday, July 21.
Zehra was taken to the Nusaybin police office the day after. During the interrogation, she was accused of "being a member of the terrorist organization PKK." The police used Dogan's paintings, along with her news reports she made and news that she shared on social media, as evidence of this membership.

After the interrogation, she was taken to the prosecutor's office on Saturday. There, she faced the same accusations based on the same evidence. The same day, the prosecutor sent Dogan to the court with a demand for her imprisonment in pre-trial detention. The court decided to imprison her based on this evidence. Zehra was transferred to Mardin Women's Prison. She will remain there at least until the prosecutor finishes the bill of accusation. Only after that will the court begin the case. There is a chance that the court will release her on the first hearing, but the entire process is expected to take at least 3-5 months, as has happened in the cases of other imprisoned Kurdish journalists.

Aslı Pasinli, Zehra Dogan's lawyer, criticized the decision and said, "Art and paintings can never be used in such a way. This is an attack on art and artistic expression."

By Onur Erem

Who is Onur Erem?

Born in Istanbul, Onur Erem graduated from University of Sabancı, Department of Social and Political Sciences. He is a journalist and translator for the daily BirGün.

(gd)