Balkans: Shelter of Exiled Journalists
Balkan countries have become a safe haven for journalists and artists fleeing from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the one-man regime in Turkey, which is becoming increasingly oppressive, and the crises in the Middle East. Balkan countries are preferred both because they are located in Europe and because of the ease of visa access.
Russian journalist Ivan Zhadaev and his wife Alice are two opposition journalists who had to go into exile from Russia. Ivan Zhadaev has been working for Russian independent media for the last 10 years. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he was declared an “enemy” and a “spy” by the Putin regime and a lynch campaign was launched against him. When one of his reports made a lot of noise and disturbed the government too much, he started receiving threats that made him seriously fear for his life and he had to leave Russia. He came to Montenegro after some friends who had fled the war offered the couple an apartment in Montenegro where they could stay for free. Despite the fact that the people of Montenegro are generally anti-NATO and Putin sympathizers, the couple says they like Russians and have not faced any discrimination so far: “For the last 10 years I have been working in independent media, like RBC TV, MBK Media, Moscow Times, Verstka Media etc . When war started, I didn’t intend to leave Russia. I wanted to stay and cover the situation from inside. But last year, the government claimed me a foreign agent. That made my life bit harder — I had to censure my posts on social media and I need to report to government about all my incomes and spendings. And yet I wanted to stay in Russia, because it’s my country. But in October, I made few reports about losses among mobilized soldiers that went viral. After that, few governmental media made false reports about me, like that I train extremists and prepare a revolution and my colleagues who have contacts among special forces warned me that they are interested in me . So I made a decision to leave while I still could.”
Zhadev says that working remotely is part of journalism and that he continues to work in Montenegro, but he misses his home country: “Actually i dont feel like I am in exile. I am used to distant working and most of the times you don’t need to be somewhere to cover this or that story. But of course I miss my country, my family, my friends, my animals — I had to leave a cat and some dogs there. Although I took a dog and a cat with me.”
According to the Zhadev couple, almost all journalists in Russia, opposition or neutral, have been forced to leave their country because of government pressure, especially after the invasion of Ukraine. Many have chosen Balkan countries such as Montenegro or Serbia, as the Zhadev couple did, while others (those who were able to obtain EU visas or already had visas) have chosen EU countries, notably the Czech Republic and Poland: “I think like 90% of my friends and colleagues journalsist left Russia, many of them long before the war. The government has been repressing media in russia for at least 8 years, so tendency was obvious.”
When asked about the situation of the family and relatives he left behind in Russia while in exile, Ivan Zhadev said, “I can’t be 100% sure that they are safe, but for now the government has no interest in them. But of course we understand that the situtation can change any moment. But my relatives are too old to move somewhere.”
Sevan Nişanyan: From Prison to Greece, Armenia to Montenegro
Another name who chose Montenegro as a port of call is Sevan Nişanyan, a Turkish Armenian linguist and writer. Apart from the Etymological Dictionary of Modern Turkish Language, he is the author of many books on various topics such as the Kemalist regime, religion and freedom of expression, a columnist for a long time, and a friend of Hrant Dink, an Armenian journalist who was racially assassinated in Turkey. Nişanyan has been on the agenda for a long time with his establishment of a hotel, a Mathematics Institute and a theater academy in a mountain village called Şirince in western Turkey. He has never had a good relationship with the Turkish bureaucracy, and when he built an ancient “rock tomb” for himself on the slope of a mountain in Şirince, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison on a series of charges including “breaking a seal and building in violation of the zoning law”. According to Nişanyan, the reasons for his sentences were pretexts and the real reason was that he was an Armenian who criticized the regime. After serving nearly 4 years in prison, one day he escaped with a plan that would be the subject of movies. First, he went to the Greek island of Samos by boat. He lived there as a refugee for a few years and married Ira Tzorou, a native of the island, half Greek, half Armenian. However, when he started to make touristic initiatives on the island, he was declared “persona non grata” and deported from Greece for reasons still unknown.
Nişanyan describes this period as follows: “Underneath its democratic veneer Greece is just as demented and paranoid a police state as any other, especially so in the Aegean islands adjoining Turkey. The situation has become really dire since the arrival of European Frontex forces which now infest the islands like a plague of locusts. They simply could not cope with a foreign person living in a godforsaken little village of theirs, an Armenian citizen but speaking Turkish, an influential writer and broadcaster married to a Greek ex-Communist. It’s just too much for them. So one day they found a minor bureaucratic infraction and decided to kick me out of the country.”
After his deportation from Greece, Nişanyan lived like a traveler, so to speak, in Armenia for a while, then in various European countries, and his last stop was Montenegro as a guest of Besim Tibuk, a famous Turkish businessman with considerable investments in Montenegro. “I like Montenegro. It is exactly midway between Western and Eastern Europe. And it is Mediterranean to boot. Lovely mountains. Charming beaches. Good restaurants. It has been 6 months. I love it. There is no reason for me to be extradited to anywhere since neither Turkey nor any other country seems interested in having me.” says Nişanyan about his life in Montenegro.
Sevan Nişanyan broadcasts live on his YouTube channel every week, chatting with thousands of viewers, and some of his words are still making headlines in the Turkish media. When asked if he is afraid of attracting so much attention as a prison escapee, he gives the following answer: “I don’t think I say anything unduly harsh in my weekly chats. I express what every reasonable person in Turkey and elsewhere is actually thinking in their honest moments, and that is why I believe so many people are loving what I say. I don’t comment on Montenegrin matters because I don’t know much about them. And of course I’d say exactly the same things regardless of where I am in the world. Why would you think that I tailor my thoughts to whoever holds power where I happen to be at the moment?”
Kaan Göktaş: Two Years in Prison for a Poem
Kaan Göktaş is a Turkish journalist and writer. He is a opposition journalist and author of seven books on topics ranging from the Theory of Evolution to the murder of Tahir Elçi, a Kurdish human rights defender assassinated by the Turkish deep state. Göktaş’s life has also changed “thanks to” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whom he opposed as a journalist and political activist. Two years ago, Göktaş shared a political poem written 300 years ago on his personal Facebook account and Tayyip Erdoğan, who, in his own words, “took it personally”, filed a lawsuit against him. In Turkey, the crime of “insulting the President” (!) is defined by a special law, and Tayyip Erdoğan’s lawyers and police officers constantly scan social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook and file lawsuits against thousands of people who criticize Erdoğan. Göktaş was sentenced to 2 years in prison and left his family and home behind with his three children and sought political asylum in a Balkan country he did not want to name. Currently a political asylum seeker, Göktaş continues to oppose Erdoğan and his one-man regime through his online news website and through the Twitter and Facebook accounts that led to his imprisonment. Believing that Erdogan and his political-Islamist, ultra-nationalist government will be toppled in Turkey’s upcoming elections in May, Göktaş also writes about the political situation in Turkey, freedom of the press and freedom of expression for Media Diversity Institute, Center For Stateless Society and other media outlets.
