Life in prime ministerial bull’s-eye

For the past 25 years, CoÅŸkun has made a name for himself with his incisive writing and recently with his involvement in a war of words with ErdoÄŸan. This has come to a point where ErdoÄŸan, in his rally to stop the Turkish public from buying DoÄŸan newspapers, including this one, singled CoÅŸkun out from the rest of the journalists. ErdoÄŸan even claimed in one recent speech that CoÅŸkun sleeps with dogs. But who exactly is this man who has been the target of the prime minister’s wrath?Â
 
The 64-year-old writer has been defined as Turkey’s grandest "anti" writer. Coşkun is aware of this. "I have always been anti. When I started my career as a journalist, I was opposing my editors, my boss. É Because I was opposing my camera, I never could take a decent photograph. I play the violin; I also oppose my violin. At home, I am [my dog] Postal’s biggest opposition because I react to him messing up our garbage can," he said.

Coşkun was born in the southeastern town of Şanlıurfa on Turkey’s Syrian border. His father was a government official, who, like Coşkun, frequently got into trouble because of his dissident stance toward the government’s policies. "He was exiled constantly, and I followed him around [different towns in Anatolia]," said Coşkun.

Coşkun’s column, "The Tenth Village," calls to mind the Turkish saying "who speaks the truth gets expelled from nine villages." The saying refers to the fact that people are bothered by someone who speaks the truth. In fact, for Coşkun the purpose of his column is to tell the truth. "Why is that column given to me? It is not so that I curry favor. It was given to me so that I can write about those things that should be criticized but that the people cannot voice," he said.

"This is important in societies that somehow cannot set themselves free, that are underdeveloped, where there is hunger, misery, poverty and ignorance, and where [the contemporary standards] in democracy and law have not caught on."

The veteran columnist believes that his decision to write the truth makes his life difficult. "I have a restless life; full of fear and concerns. É I cannot go to a cinema or theater, or to a restaurant just like anyone else. There is always the likelihood that someone will assault me. Is this something nice? Not at all," he said. "But if I give priority to my own life, it would mean I am not doing my job."

Coşkun is celebrated for his use of humor in his articles. "I do not use this much humor in my daily life," he said. "This is why I do not interfere with myself [when I write]. As a person, I am human. I might have troubles; my shoe may be pinching my foot, I may be hungry. É But when I sit in front of the computer and start writing, then I become someone else." He does not believe he has the right to write about his personal issues or worries in his columns.

Although Coşkun steadily opposes the government, he is also upset with Turkish society. He believes society itself is responsible for what happens to it. "I think that the biggest obstacle Turkish society faces is itself. Hunger, misery, poverty, ignorance, blood and tears É but the Turkish society itself is primarily responsible for these," he said.

"It is hard to believe that only 3-5 million [people] read newspapers in a society of 70 million. It is also hard to believe that a society is praying in a language it does not understand, it does not know what that prayer means, and is not even curious to know."

CoÅŸkun said Turkish society always blames the politicians, the Constitution, the laws, journalists, but never itself. "Parliament has changed many times, there have been 59-60 governments, the Constitution has changed seven times, and there have been 11 different presidents. Everything has changed," he said. "The only thing that has not changed in this package is the voters, society itself. And in parallel to that, it is this unfortunate fate that has not changed."

Pako, the dog that left his mark
Coşkun is also known to be an animal lover, the "father" of Turkey’s most famous dog, the late Pako. He is also a violin player, and a man in love with the sea. His harsh, yet humorous criticism of the Turkish government as a journalist clashes with Coşkun as a person, a romantic, emotional man. "I judge myself, too, and tell myself to be more positive. That is when I play the violin," said Coşkun, who plays well-known Turkish classical music songs. "Or I play with Postal as I used to play with Pako," he said, referring to his dogs.

Pako, Turkey’s best-known canine, was a 13-kilogram ragged black dog. Using Pako’s point-of-view, Coşkun made programs for television, wrote columns and organized campaigns that yielded results in laws regulating hunting, animal rights and the preservation of forests.

"But the most interesting part was Pako’s death," Coşkun said. Upon Pako’s death, the head of the leading opposition party and health minister each issued a statement, the president had sent his condolences, thousands of people sent faxes expressing their sorrow, and Pako’s death became a news story in all newscasts and newspapers. "It was almost like a saint or a scientist had died. I was not aware either that Pako had become the voice of children, of women, of anyone with a conscience in Turkey," said Coşkun. "He had surpassed me."

Hobbies complementing work
The writer believes his hobbies and work complete each other. "While I play the violin, a piece I am playing can open the door for an article," he said. "Then the sea Äž the sea is a philosophy. It taught me not to sink; it taught me how to stay on it, how to walk on the most slippery ground," said CoÅŸkun, whose love for the sea started during his childhood.

"My father was stationed in the Harran Plain [on the Syrian border]. It was a place in the middle of a desert where water was drawn with a bucket from a 60-meter well. I had a colored comic book. In that book, an American family, father, mother, a boy, and a girl, sail off to the sea. The boat starts sinking so they take refuge in an island," said CoÅŸkun.

"I had only one thing to read and that was that comic book. I kept reading it from beginning to the end. But there was one problem: Every time the brazier was lit at home, my book would lose some of its pages. At the end, only one page remained. It was a full page of a picture of the father and the son repairing the sailboat while the mother and the daughter lit a fire. That picture is where my love for the sea began.

"I dreamt that I would be a sailor when I grew up, that I would sail out to the sea. When I grew up, I came to Ankara for university. I bought an inflatable plastic boat with the first money I earned and took it to the lake here."

CoÅŸkun sees carpentry, another of his hobbies, as one more element that completes his writings. "I believe all materials have an identity. Stone is very loyal. Stones wait by graves for 2,000-3,000 years. Iron is warrior-like. Tips of all weapons are made of iron. Earth is motherly; it tends to give. The material I hate the most is plastic. It is elusive and hypocritical; it will take any shape," he said. "But wood is not like that. It is very emotional. You see its veins as you caress it. It is a lover; it is love. All cribs are made of wood. Children grow up in wood, especially in poor societies. Most, if not all, of musical instruments are made of wood. That is why I love working with wood."

Coşkun thinks he had no other choice but to become a writer. "For me, expressing myself in a written manner was an absolute necessity. I cannot pronounce the letters ’s’ and ’z.’ And when I get angry, I cannot speak at all," said the columnist. He explained he would resolve issues with his parents or siblings through letters. "And I wrote long love letters to girls," he said. "It developed into expressing myself by writing."

Coşkun started his career as a photojournalist in 1974. He then became a reporter. "Being a newsperson was not for me. A man would tell me something off the record, and I would honor that. When I read that same story in other newspapers the next day, I decided I could not do this job," he said. "Or while writing a news story about a man who has betrayed his wife, I would think that maybe the man has a child that goes to school and that the child’s friends would read this. I would consider how the child would run crying to his mother. There have been many stories like this that I have decided not to report."

Coşkun found writing columns to be more honest. He likes the word "village" in his column’s name and considers himself to be a villager. "I like walking around in my socks, I do not like using silverware much, I like dipping my bread in the sauce of my food, I get confused when there are too many glasses on the table. I like sitting on the floor, creaking doors and leaking faucets. Because my wife is French, she tries to turn the house into an urban home. I spend time in the ’village’ part of the house in the basement," said Coşkun.

CoÅŸkun believes the biggest problem of the media is that it is not independent. "Because newspapers and TV stations are entities that live on income from advertising, they are dependent on the capital sector. In the Western world, the media needs to be dependent on capital. But in Turkey, it also needs to be dependent on the government because laws are not very effective and justice is not very central and the future of the media is between the lips of the government. This is the case with [the government and] the DoÄŸan Group recently," he said.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CLASH

The war of words between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Hürriyet columnist Bekir Coşkun has been ongoing for a while. Some highlights are as follows:

"The man scratching his belly" was the title of Coşkun’s article that angered Erdoğan. The article, published May 3, 2007, in the months leading to general elections, describes Justice and Development Party, or the AKP, voters as ignorant men, oblivious to what is going on in the world or to the protests by Kemalists. Coşkun also wrote in the article that democracy could not flourish in a society where "the man scratching his belly" is in the majority.

During a speech in the city of Sivas during the local elections rally Feb. 14, Erdoğan, without mentioning the columnist’s name, accused Coşkun of being a partisan writer for the opposition, citing the columnist’s "the man scratching his belly" article and saying: "These have beloved dogs. They sleep with their dogs." This was clearly referring to Coşkun, who is known for his love of animals. Coşkun replied to Erdoğan in his column the next day through the point of view of his dog Postal, expressing the dog’s disappointment in Erdoğan’s lack of love for animals and saying that such a love would be able to prevent wars. "This became very interesting Ğ for the first time in the history of Eastern media, a dog responded to the prime minister. Then the prime minister, realizing that he could not overcome Postal, did not comment," said Coşkun during an interview with the Daily News.

On Aug. 15, 2007, Coşkun wrote that with Parliament’s election of Abdullah Gül, who had served as foreign minister in the AKP government and who is a long-time close associate of

Erdoğan, as Turkey’s president would put an end to Turkey’s secular stance. He also wrote that Gül was elected by "the man scratching his belly" and could be his president but not Coşkun’s because the new president did not represent his sentiments.

Erdoğan replied to Coşkun’s "He will not be my president" article of Aug. 15 harshly, saying, "If he is not your president, then renounce your Turkish nationality." The columnist’s reply came in his Aug. 22 article, "I have nowhere to go," where he explained how he loved Turkey and had done all his duties toward his motherland.

The animal-lover in CoÅŸkun took another political turn when Cihan, the horse that kicked ErdoÄŸan off his back a couple of years before, died. In his article "We lost Cihan" on Dec. 30, 2007, CoÅŸkun referred to Cihan as a valuable, respectful, sensitive and conscious horse that had never tried to curry favors but courageously did what was necessary. Moreover, CoÅŸkun, wrote in his article that no one, including ErdoÄŸan, had tried to punish Cihan for what he had done. This, argued CoÅŸkun, was interesting in a culture where animals that bothered people were killed.