One of the great things about this job is that you sometimes meet truly remarkable people. Can Dündar, the Editor in Chief of Turkey’s Cumhuriyet newspaper is a good example.
The world is getting to know Dündar. Recently someone tried to shoot him outside a court in Istanbul, and the footage from that terrifying incident flashed around the globe.
He had been on trial on espionage and terrorism charges and, two hours after dodging bullets, was sentenced to nearly six years in prison. A hard day at the office you might say.
Dündar would chuckle at that line. In fact his dry sense of humour seems to pervade everything.
The moment Dündar was shot at outside an Istanbul court was caught on camera. Source: Supplied
When I filmed him for Dateline in his office a few weeks earlier, my first question to him was, “Am, I sitting next to a terrorist?”
It was met with the familiar grin and chuckle and the reply that, no, he was better than that, he was a spy. And that when he was detained in prison he was in fact the only spy behind bars. This was followed by another chuckle.
I got another good look at the measured way he goes about things as I observed him with his staff. They were preparing the next day’s paper.
Dündar offered a word here, a comment there as he moved quietly down a row of computers.
When his son turned up at the office, there was Dad with his arm slung casually across his boy’s shoulder, chatting away. Deadlines be damned. They could have been meeting at a café.
Was this man potentially facing many years in prison?
His calm demeanour belies the seriousness of his situation. He and his Ankara bureau chief published a story alleging that the government was trucking arms to rebels in Syria.
The government said the arms were destined for ethnic Turkmen – but Dündar wasn’t buying that alibi.
Heavy charges and time in an isolation cell followed for Dündar. “So what was that like?” I asked. The question brought another example of his dry wit. “I like spending time on my own,” he told me.
The fact he’s now in the eye of a political and legal storm apparently hasn’t changed him. Immediately after the shooting, he was urging his customary calm and lashing the government for making him a target.
That’s the thing about Dündar. He’s on a mission to highlight what he regards as a government crackdown on freedom of speech.
“We have a president that hates criticism. He tries to give the idea that if you criticise me you will be in jail,” says Dündar. But he won’t be silenced.
His family and many supporters are one hundred per cent behind him as he begins an appeal against the sentence. His wife is no slouch either. She jumped on the gunman just after he fired.
Of course, Dündar politely thanked her in his post-shooting press conference. That’s the type of person he is.
