Journalists who pursue the truth have a very bad habit of not getting tired and not giving up!

The 26th Metin Göktepe Journalism Award was presented to its winners at an event held yesterday.

The first Metin Göktepe Journalism Award was given one year after Metin Göktepe, the reporter of our newspaper, was killed by police officers in police custody on 8 January 1996.

Officially, censorship was abolished in our country in 1908. That is why journalists have (not) been celebrating the "abolition of censorship" for 115 years!

Unlike in countries where freedom of the press and freedom of the public to receive news is more or less in force, journalists are forced to use their energies and talents not only to pursue the news, but also to overcome the self-censorship that has been imposed on each and every one of them, and, when necessary, to perform "heroic acts" that risk being fired, dragged through the courts and imprisoned.

As a matter of fact, today more than 300 journalists are on trial in courts. 41 journalists are in prison. Turkey ranks second in the list of countries that have been turned into open prisons for journalists!

The Communications Directorate of the Presidency, which was placed in a skyscraper in Ankara because it could not fit in an ordinary building, and which operates as the regime's "propaganda ministry", and the "Law on Combating Disinformation" enacted last year are brought to the public eye as symbols of this large open prison.

The Press Advertisement Agency (BİK) hangs over the heads of the print media and the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) hangs over the heads of the visual media as the Sword of Damocles.

METİN GÖKTEPE JOURNALISM: JOURNALISM IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH!

26th Metin Göktepe Journalism Awards are given to encourage journalists who are

1. Against the traditional Cağaloğlu journalism that says, "You cannot become a journalist, you are born a journalist," and that attributes mystical, self-evident characteristics to journalism,
2. Against holding journalism, which does not recognise the most fundamental values of journalism and does not have values beyond the interests of its bosses by moving its newspaper headquarters to the plazas of holding companies,
3. Pursue the truth against partisan journalism, which has become politicised in recent years and evolved into the centre of the regime's propaganda machine as a type of holding journalism, and who link media freedom to the freedom of the public to receive news, and who risk being fired, blacklisted, tried, imprisoned, and even murdered by dark power centres when necessary to make the truth known to the public.

I congratulate our journalist friends from every local and national media organisation who received these awards and wish them continued success.

Of course, the journalists who pursue the truth are not only our friends who received awards yesterday. On the contrary, just as the award is a symbol, the award-winning journalists are symbolic representatives of many journalists who pursue the truth.

Otherwise, since the first civilian daily newspaper in our country, Tasfiri Efkâr by Şinasi and Agâh Efendi published in the 1860s, hundreds, even thousands of journalists have always declared the truth despite all kinds of pressures and attacks, from being fired from their jobs to exile, from being imprisoned to being murdered.

Today, many journalists continue to pursue the truth under the threat of being fired, sentenced to starvation, put on trial, imprisoned, or even murdered, simply because they see journalism as the work of delivering the truth to the public and try to fulfil this duty.

ONE MAN REGIME WILL NOT BE ABLE TO COVER UP THE TRUTH! BECAUSE...

The one-man regime, which aims to somehow "take" the elections since it has given up hope of winning, increases the pressure on the media, especially on journalists who pursue the truth, as the election process progresses in order to cover up the quagmire they dragged the country into in the economy, domestic and foreign politics. The pro-establishment media in the first place, followed by BİK and RTÜK, prosecutors and partisan courts, sects and congregations, and the enemy of the truth know no bounds in targeting journalists in pursuit of the truth.

Just as "the truth has a bad habit of coming out", journalists who pursue the truth have a much worse habit of not getting tired and not giving up while pursuing the truth!

What makes the history of journalism in our country, which spans more than 160 years, a history worthy of journalists are the journalists who see journalism as the work of uncovering the truth.

Metin Göktepe's journalism has also had an importance in the history of journalism as a vein that combines this understanding of journalism with the struggle for the liberation of our peoples and our working class.

Metin Göktepe journalism will continue to exist until the pressures on the people's freedom of information and journalists in pursuit of the truth come to an end.

This is our promise to our peoples and working class as writers, reporters... all employees of Evrensel!