Can Dündar is a very courageous journalist. --Orhan Pamuk
In November 2015, Can Dündar, editor-in-chief of the Turkish daily
newspaper Cumhuriyet, was arrested on charges of divulging state
secrets and espionage. Condemned and arraigned by the President himself,
Dündar's crime was informing the public of the discovery of a highly
illegal covert arms shipment. The story revealed that the country's
intelligence service was secretly shipping weapons to Syria, making
Turkey a party to the Syrian civil war. This was a crime that it was in
the government's interest to conceal, and a journalist's duty to expose.
The title of We Are Arrested is taken from Can Dündar's tweet on the
day he was detained. This book is his account of the discovery, the
decision to publish it, and the events that unfolded after that
decision. Dündar and the newspaper faced police barricades, would-be
suicide bombers and assassination attempts, and fierce attacks from
pro-government media.
Incarcerated in Silivri Prison, Dündar decided to write down his
experiences. Here, in isolation, he learned to appreciate the small
things in life. Most importantly, he realised that courage in an age of
fear is essential if the public's right to know is to be defended.
Following the events of July 2016, in which elements of Turkey's armed
forces staged an attempted coup against the country's government,
prompting backlash from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, this book stands
as a beacon for free speech.
Can Dündar is editor-in-chief of the venerable daily newspaper
Cumhuriyet. In May of 2016 he was sentenced to imprisonment for five
years and ten months for leaking secret information of the state.
