For the John Templeton Foundation, I wrote about a new toolkit for activists.
In September of 2016, brothers Mehmet and Ahmet Altan were detained by the Turkish government on the charge of allegedly giving subliminal messages “suggestive” of the coup attempt that had happened three months earlier during a television panel. The Altans, who are both journalists and literary writers, were among many writers and public intellectuals imprisoned or threatened with arrest following the coup attempt. In 2019, Ahmet Altan published a memoir from prison entitled I Will Never See the World Again. In it he writes, “You can imprison me but you cannot keep me here. Because like all writers, I have magic.”
Around the world, hundreds of writers, academics and public intellectuals are currently being imprisoned, harassed or threatened with detention or violence in connection with their work or their related activism. In May of 2020, PEN America released its first annual Freedom to Write Index, documenting at least 238 such writers — the majority of whom were in just three countries: China, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. In addition to the Freedom to Write Index’s annual summation — the 2020 edition is currently being finalized for release in Spring 2021 — PEN America simultaneously launched the Writers at Risk Database, an ongoing searchable public record of cases (currently numbering more than 600) involving writers and intellectuals whose freedom has been threatened or taken away on account of their work. Both initiatives were funded by a two-year grant from the John Templeton Foundation.