Free Speech under Authoritarian Rule

 

 

In the slide from democracy into authoritarianism,  the boundaries of permissible speech can shift, trapping journalists, scholars, and activists on the wrong side. A society can feel free, while it is slipping into despotism.

 

Join journalist and filmmaker Can Dündar and philosopher Jason Stanley for a conversation about truth-telling, responsibility, exile, and loss.

   

 

 

Can Dündar has been working as a journalist for the last 45 years, for several newspapers and magazines. He produced many TV documentaries focusing particularly on modern Turkish history and cultural anthropology. He worked as an anchorman for several news channels. He stepped down from his post as the editor in chief of the daily Cumhuriyet in 2016, after he was prisoned due to his story on the Turkish Intelligence Service’s involvement in the Syrian war. He was sentenced in absentia to 27 years in jail in December 2020.

 

He founded  #ÖZGÜRÜZRadio (WeAreFree) in Berlin in 2016. He’s been a columnist for Die Zeit since August 2016. He has made documentaries for ARTE, ZDF, DW, ARD, and written more than 40 books, some of which were published German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Albanian, Arabic, Chinese. He now leads the YouTube channel called “#Özgürüz” (“We are Free” in Turkish) at CORRECTİV.