Exiled non-Jewish Turkish woman studies antisemitism in Turkey. Interview with Uzay Bulut

• Author: Sheri Oz
• Published date: 27 December 2022
• Publication title: Israel National News (Israel)

After two and a-half years in Israel, she is now living in Greece, which she says she loves. But being out of Turkey does not make her completely safe as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has put a bounty on hundreds of Turkish journalists outside the country

What makes a member of the majority privileged class change the natural course of her life by taking on the human rights violations she says are committed by her country's government? And why is she so interested in antisemitism? At one point in this interview, Bulut taught me a history lesson that stunned me but should not have surprised me, really.

Sitting across from me on Zoom was a fair-skinned, brown-eyed woman whose red lips match the ruby red of her hair. A smile constantly played on her lips and she would periodically burst out in merry high-pitched laughter.

I started by asking her to describe her childhood.

I was born in Turkey, in a city on the north shore of the Black Sea. It's such a beautiful and historic city, so green. I love forests and mountains – I'm a mountain girl. I feel happiest when I am in nature.

Because my background was Sunni Muslim Turkish, we were privileged citizens of the country. I was never exposed to persecution and had no problems because of my identity and ethnicity. In Turkey, the ideal citizen is a Sunni Muslim Turk.

I loved reading. I loved newspapers and I would read all the columns. I would cut out the good ones and put them in a file and archive them. Who did that in middle school? I would watch political debates on TV for hours.

It is not surprising, then, that you became a journalist. Did you always have in mind writing about Turkish human rights abuses?

No. I was indoctrinated at school in the ideologies of Turkish nationalism, Turkish history, and geography and when I was growing up, there were no minorities around me. I didn't even know that there were minorities in Turkey. I only knew of eastern Kurds - but in a limited way - because of the news on TV. Therefore, I did not know of the persecution against any religious or ethnic minority in Turkey; the plight of these minorities wasn't discussed on TV or taught at school.

I had no idea about Jews, Christians, Yazidis. I didn't know anything.

What changed for you?

I think my eyes started to really open at university. But I remember I was also questioning things in high school to some extent. I remember, for example, that in our city there were Turkish nationalists and Islamic nationalists. I had two friends – one was a religious nationalist and one an ethnic nationalist. They were discussing which was more important: being a Turk first and a Muslim second or Muslim first and Turk second?

My response was that we should be human first. Before ethnicity and religion. I remember that conversation well. I kind of felt something was wrong with the political culture. So maybe I have had that feeling in me since childhood.

I always had a kind-of rebel inside me, even before I changed my mind completely about my country.

How did your career develop in the early years?

I received an MA in Ankara in Media and Cultural Studies. While doing my master's, I started blogging and worked for Rudaw, a Kurdish news agency based in Erbil, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The editor was in Canada – a Kurdish man – and I was in Ankara writing news reports. This was, to be honest, my favorite journalistic experience because I was reporting on the ground.

I covered Kurdish issues in Turkey, but I also covered other topics: political prisoners, protests, human rights abuses. I was interviewing people all the time. For example, I interviewed victims and eyewitnesses of a pogrom in Maras against the...