Popular with celebrities, the Instagram trend was intended to draw attention to violence against women in Turkey
Feminists in Turkey have called on the rest of the world not to forget the original context of Instagram’s #challengeaccepted trend, which was supposed to draw attention to skyrocketing rates of gender-based violence in the country before it was co-opted by western celebrities.
Femicide, violence against women and so-called “honour” killings are deeply rooted issues in Turkey. Last week, the country was rocked by the brutal killing of Pınar Gültekin, a 27-year-old student, who was allegedly killed by an ex-boyfriend.
Campaigners are also deeply worried about fresh efforts by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling party to repeal a Council of Europe treaty known as the Istanbul convention, groundbreaking legislation from 2011 that protects victims of domestic and gender-based violence and effectively prosecutes offenders.
Marches in four Turkish cities last week mourning Gültekin’s death and calling on Turkish politicians to uphold the Istanbul convention were accompanied by hundreds of thousands of social media posts: one initiative involved posting photos on Instagram in black and white to emphasise how pictures of murdered women end up in black and white in the pages of newspapers.
We Will Stop Femicide: ‘After the death of one of our sisters, we share black and white photographs and keep their memory alive.’ Photograph: beelzeboobz
The black and white challenge appears to have started in 2016 to raise awareness of cancer, but the repurposed idea along with appeals for women to tag others who inspire or support them and hashtags such as #challengeaccepted and #İstanbulSözleşmesiYaşatır, or “Enforce the Istanbul Convention”, quickly took off in Turkey.
As the hashtags were translated and shared in other languages and western celebrities such as Jennifer Aniston, Eva Longoria and even Ivanka Trump picked up on the trend, the original context appears to have been lost on most users, morphing into a lighthearted - if directionless - display of female solidarity.
“The black and white photo challenge and #challengeaccepted movement did not start in Turkey, but Turkish women sparked the latest round of pictures because we are worried about withdrawing from the Istanbul convention. Every day, after the death of one of our sisters, we share black and white photographs and keep their memory alive,” said Fidan Ataselim, the general secretary of the campaign group We Will Stop Femicide.
“The Istanbul convention keeps Turkish women alive. We call on women from all over the world to spread this message and stand side by side with us against inequality.”
Chef Nigella Lawson’s original #challengeaccepted post was followed up with an apology after activists pointed out the original meaning of the campaign.
“I have only just found out that this challenge was originally meant to draw attention to the growing number of murders of women in Turkey, and am mortified didn’t know [sic] when I posted. It seems inappropriate now, and hardly fitting for the serious and terrible issue of femicide. I apologise,” she wrote.
Comedian Miranda Hart also issued a mea culpa for posting a photograph without realising where the campaign had come from.
“I am one of many women who didn’t research the #challengeaccepted #blackandwhitechallenge thoroughly. Although I am always grateful for a chance to support and uphold the women who uphold me, this ‘challenge’ is about raising awareness of the atrocious Femicide in Turkey.”
Gültekin is one of 120 women who have been killed in Turkey so far this year, mostly by partners and relatives. A total of 474 women were killed in 2019, the highest rate in a decade in which the numbers have increased year on year. The figures for 2020, affected by coronavirus lockdowns, are expected to be even higher.
Despite the fact Turkey has the highest femicide rate among 34 OECD countries, conservative elements in Turkey’s political sphere have repeatedly petitioned for the country to withdraw from the Istanbul convention on the grounds that it encourages divorce and ‘immoral lifestyles’.
On Tuesday, Meral Akşener, the leader of the opposition İYİ Parti (Good party) called on Erdoğan to uphold the legislation, saying that the government’s failure to properly implement the law since it was ratified in 2014 was contributing to the rising levels of gender-based violence.
The world-famous Hagia Sophia museum in Istanbul - originally founded as a cathedral - has been turned back into a mosque.
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the decision after a court annulled the site's museum status.
Built 1,500 years ago as an Orthodox Christian cathedral, Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest in 1453.
A woman wrapped in a Turkish national flag gestures outside the Hagia Sophia museum. Getty Images
In 1934 it became a museum and is now a Unesco World Heritage site.
Islamists in Turkey long called for it to be converted to a mosque but secular opposition members opposed the move. The proposal prompted criticism from religious and political leaders worldwide.
Defending the decision, President Erdogan stressed that the country had exercised its sovereign right in converting it back to a mosque.
He told a press conference the first Muslim prayers would be held inside the building on 24 July.
"Like all our mosques, the doors of Hagia Sophia will be wide open to locals and foreigners, Muslims and non-Muslims," he added.
Shortly after the announcement, the first call to prayer was recited at Hagia Sophia and was broadcast on all of Turkey's main news channels. The cultural site's social media channels have now been taken down.
What has the reaction been?
Unesco has said it "deeply regrets" the decision to turn the museum into a mosque and called on the Turkish authorities to "open a dialogue without delay."
The organisation had urged Turkey not to change its status without discussion.
The head of the Eastern Orthodox Church has condemned the move, as has Greece - home to many millions of Orthodox followers.
The Hagia Sophia has huge significance as a religious and political symbol. Getty Images
Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said it was an "open provocation to the civilised world".
"The nationalism displayed by President Erdogan... takes his country back six centuries," she said in a statement.
The court ruling "absolutely confirms that there is no independent justice" in Turkey, she added.
But the Council of State, Turkey's top administrative court, said in its ruling on Friday: "It was concluded that the settlement deed allocated it as a mosque and its use outside this character is not possible legally."
"The cabinet decision in 1934 that ended its use as a mosque and defined it as a museum did not comply with laws," it said.
The Church in Russia, home to the world's largest Orthodox Christian community, immediately expressed regret that the Turkish court had not taken its concerns into account when ruling on Hagia Sophia.
It said the decision could lead to even greater divisions.
While the move is popular with conservative religious supporters of President Erdogan, Turkey's most famous author, Orhan Pamuk said the decision would take away the "pride" some Turks had in being a secular Muslim nation.
"There are millions of secular Turks like me who are crying against this but their voices are not heard," he told the BBC.
The site is now one of Turkey's most visited tourist attractions. Getty Images
Analysis by Oral Guerin, BBC News Istanbul
A change is coming to Hagia Sophia, which has endured since the 6th century, outlasting the Byzantine empire and the Ottoman era.
Now, once again, it will be a mosque. But Turkish officials say Christian emblems, including mosaics of the Virgin Mary which adorn its soaring golden dome, will not be removed.
Making changes at Hagia Sophia is profoundly symbolic. It was Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, who decreed that it should be a museum. President Erdogan is now taking one more step to dismantle Ataturk's secular legacy, and remould Turkey according to his vision. The Turkish leader - who presents himself as a modern day conqueror - is making no apologies for the change. He says anyone who doesn't like it - and plenty abroad don't - is attacking Turkey's sovereignty.
Reclaiming Hagia Sophia plays well with his base - religious conservatives - and with Turkish nationalists. Critics say he's using the issue to distract attention from the economic damage done here by the Covid19 pandemic.
But many in the international community argue that the monument belongs to humanity - not to Turkey - and should have remained unchanged. They say it was a bridge between two faiths, and a symbol of co-existence.
History of a global icon
Hagia Sophia's complex history began in the year 537 when Byzantine emperor Justinian built the huge church overlooking the Golden Horn harbour
It remained in Byzantine hands for centuries apart from a brief moment in 1204 when Crusaders raided the city
In 1453, in a devastating blow to the Byzantines, Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II captured Istanbul (formerly known as Constantinople) and the victorious conqueror performed Friday prayers inside Hagia Sophia
The Ottomans soon converted the building into a mosque, adding four minarets to the exterior and covering ornate Christian icons and gold mosaics with panels of Arabic religious calligraphy
After centuries at the heart of the Muslim Ottoman empire, it was turned into a museum in 1934 in a drive to make Turkey more secular
Today Hagia Sophia is Turkey's most popular tourist site, attracting more than 3.7 million visitors a year
Regime says it is cracking down on anything linked to Fethullah Gülen, the Muslim cleric it blames for 2016’s attempted coup
More than 300,000 books have been removed from Turkish schools and libraries and destroyed since the attempted coup of 2016, according to Turkey’s ministry of education.
Turkey’s education minister Ziya Selçuk announced last week that 301,878 books had been destroyed as the government cracks down on anything linked to Fethullah Gülen, the US-based Muslim cleric who is accused by Turkey of instigating 2016’s failed military coup. Gülen has denied involvement.
The figure was first reported by the popular newspaper Hürriyet, with images of books being seized and burned published by online news outlet Kronos27.
A building in Istanbul is reflected on a poster of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose government is leading the crackdown. Photograph: Emrah Gurel/AP
According to the website Turkey Purge, which describes itself as “a small group of young journalists who are trying to be the voice for Turkish people who suffer under an oppressive regime”, in 2016 a maths book was banned for featuring Gülen’s initials in a question reading “from point F to point G”. In December 2016, Turkish newspaper BirGün reported that 1.8m textbooks had been destroyed and reprinted for containing the “objectionable” word Pennsylvania, which is where Gülen lives in a guarded compound. Streets named Gülen in Ankara have also been renamed, according to reports.
Free speech organisations said they were alarmed at the comments from Turkey’s minister of education. “In just three years, the publishing landscape in Turkey has been all but decimated, with 29 publishing houses shut down by emergency decree for ‘spreading terrorist propaganda’,” said PEN International and English PEN in a joint statement.
A 2018 report from English PEN found that, following the state of emergency decreed after the attempted coup, 200 media outlets and publishing organisations had been shut down, 80 writers subjected to investigations and prosecutions and 5,822 academics dismissed from 118 public universities. The report pointed to a “crisis of freedom of expression” in Turkey.
“The government has dramatically increased its influence on the media and publishing landscape, thereby silencing critical voices,” said PEN. “We call on the Turkish authorities to permit the reopening and independent operation of publishing houses, and to urgently end their far-reaching crackdown on freedom of expression, which continues unabated.”
Drone footage of 300 chateaux in abandoned development lays bare challenges facing Turkish economy
Drone footage of an eerie abandoned urban development of mini castles in Turkey has shone a light on the troubles facing the country’s economy.
Burj al Babas, billed as a luxury housing development near Mudurnu, a village roughly halfway between Istanbul and Ankara, was left unfinished last year after its developers Sarot Property Group went bankrupt.
The future of the 300 closely packed chateaux – which cost an estimated £151m to build – is now uncertain and the project has become a cautionary tale for other developers in Turkey’s debt-laden construction sector.
Work began in 2014 on units primarily designed as holiday homes for wealthy Gulf tourists. The plans also included Turkish baths and an entertainment complex.
Only a handful of the £379,000 Disney-style homes were sold, however, and several investors have since pulled out, Mezher Yerdelen, deputy chair of the Sarot Property Group, told Agence France-Presse.
Of 732 planned buildings, 587 were completed, and the company is now £20m in debt.
Empty homes in the Burj al Babas development.
Photograph: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images
The construction project has long been hated by Mudurnu locals, who say it is not in keeping with the area’s traditional architecture, characterised by Byzantine buildings, traditional Ottoman wooden houses and a 600-year-old mosque.
Since Burj al Babas got the go-ahead, the Turkish government has introduced new building regulations designed to preserve local character and heritage. In several places, housing developments must now be low-rise and fit in with existing neighbourhoods.
But it may be too late to undo some of the damage, said Yaşar Adnan Adanalı, an Istanbul-based urban development researcher. “I worry that projects like Burj al Babas opened Pandora’s box, in some respects,” he said. “Developments without proper planning that do not contextualise the geography and history of their surroundings have exploded in Turkey since.”
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has encouraged a construction boom during his time in office, hailing large, job-heavy infrastructure projects as the engine of the Turkish economy.
However, the weakening Turkish lira has left many companies struggling to pay off the foreign currency debt borrowed to finance projects, stalling work and bankrupting companies. The collapsing construction bubble has resulted in half-finished high-rises and ghost towns all over the country.
A row of empty homes in the development. Photograph: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images
Atilla Yesilada, Turkey analyst for GlobalSource Partners, an emerging markets analysis firm, said Burj al Babas’s fate was a snapshot of the wider malaise plaguing the Turkish construction sector. “It’s not just the homebuilders who go bankrupt. The people who supply goods to those industries – the architects, the technicians, the glass makers – those people suffer too,” he said.
Last year, Turkey slashed the financial and investment criteria for foreigners to become Turkish citizens, in a move it is hoped will double annual property investment by foreigners to around £7.6bn.
Despite no sure indications that the country’s economic woes will reverse in the near future, Sarot Group is still hopeful Gulf investors, lured by the prospect of Turkish passports, will return and Burj al Babas will be finished.
“We only need to sell 100 villas to pay off our debt,” said Yerdelen. “I believe we can get over this crisis in four to five months and partially inaugurate the project in 2019.”
Turkish social media users joining the hugely viral #10YearChallenge have sparked a debate about the practice of wearing the Islamic headscarf.
Turkish women who took off their headscarves adopted this trend to talk about the reasons behind their decision.
The topic has long been a controversial subject. Wearing headscarves in public institutions was banned for years and students were not allowed to go to university with their headscarves.
But over the past decade under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the ban has gradually been lifted.
The headscarf was banned for years in Turkey
Secularists see the headscarf as a symbol of politics and religious conservatism and accuse Mr Erdogan's government of pushing a religious agenda.
Pressure on some young women to wear headscarves has also come from pious Muslim parents and some parts of wider society.
The #10YearChallenge has seen people sharing photos from 10 years ago and today but for some of the women in Turkey the decision to remove their headscarf was more recent, so they instead used the hashtag the #1yearchallenge.
Among them were Nazan, who shared a photo of herself paragliding.
"#1yearchallenge, there is no possible way to describe how beautiful it feels to live as you believe and as you want," she tweeted.
Many of those messages have been retweeted on Twitter by an online platform called You'll Never Walk Alone.
It encourages Turkish women who took off their headscarves, or who are thinking about taking off their headscarves, to share their stories.
The founder of the website told the BBC Turkish, on condition of anonymity, that the aim was to show Turkish women that "they are not alone and that they are in solidarity with those women in their difficult journey".
"Nobody at 13-14 years old age should be forced to wear something they'll have to put on for the rest of their lives," the founder said to BBC Turkish. Here are some more of their stories
"Anybody can say anything they want. WE ARE LIBERATED and this has nothing to do with our family or our entourage," Busranur wrote.
"Our thoughts about ourselves and our thoughts about what we can do have been liberated.
"We are purified from any kind of dogmas - the religion could ever impose on a woman. We did not play the role others have assigned for us. We have become ourselves #10yearchallenge."
İsteyen istediği yere çekebilir, ÖZGÜRLEŞTİK. Ve bunun aileyle çevreyle alakası yok. Kendimize, yapabileceklerimize dair düşüncelerimiz özgürleşti. Dinin kadına dayattığı tüm normlardan arındık. Başkalarının bize biçtiği rolü oynamadık. Kendimiz olduk.#10yearschallengepic.twitter.com/bdX1O8bacy
"I do smile all the time but life is not always bed of roses for me. As a graduate from Imam Hatip religious high school, it was me fighting for the right of wearing a headscarf (in universities) but I also fought to take off it for eight years," another tweeted.
"For a long time, I had an inner struggle and for the five years it has turned out to be struggle against my entourage and the whole society."
Hep gülüyorum ama hayat o kadar da toz pembe değil benim için. Başörtüsü ve katsayı için mücadele eden İHL mezunu ben, sonrasında 8 sene boyunca taşıdığı örtüyü çıkarma mücadelesi veren yine ben. Uzun süre, önce kendime 5 yıldır da tüm çevreme ve topluma karşı.#10YearsChallengepic.twitter.com/bTZvTatjMg
Others saw it differently
There has been a counter-response, though, with some women saying it was their choice to wear headscarves.
"#10yearchallenge it's my fourth year wearing a headscarf. I don't think it's right to discuss freedom in such a way," wrote one woman.
"I can't accept the fact that some enthusiastically praise those who take off their headscarves as enlightened human as if they own morality."
#10yearchallenge 4. Yılım oldu başörtüsüyle .Daha özgür meselesinin bu kadar modernist kalıplar üzerinden yürütülmesini doğru bulmuyorum ve bir kesimin "iştahla" başını açanlara "aydınlanmış insan" övgüleri ile ahlakın sahibi kendileriymis gibi davranmasını da kabul etmiyorm... pic.twitter.com/ppfO8wEWMy
Men joined the debate too
"Anybody can cover themselves or uncover as they like, this is nobody's business," wrote one.
"I see posts from those uncovering over the last few days. I think it turned out to be a bit of empty talk! You should have respect for those putting on headscarves as well as those who take them off. Stop making insulting comments!"
İsteyen istediği gibi açılır saçılır kapanır kimseyi ilgilendirmez de , bir kaç gündür kapanıp açılanların değişimleri dolaşıp duruyor. Bu biraz tesettürü meze yapmaya döndü sanki! Açılana saygı duyduğunuz gibi kapalı olanlara da saygı duyun hakaretvari yorum yapmayın insan olun!
This user said "identifying freedom with the headscarf is wrong".
"Associating the headscarf with liberation (freedom) is bigotry. Freedom is an ability to act freely without being under anyone's oppression. Sometimes, even self-covering would be freedom."
Basörtü takmamanin özgürlükle bagtastirilmasi nasil bir gericiliktir. Özgürlük kisinin baski altinda olmadan istegidi gibi hareket etmesidir. Bazen kapanabilmek de özgürlüktür.
A postal address is the marker that identifies our home's place in the world. The last line designates our country, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
But for a few million people worldwide, that last line of the address is a problem. The international postal service does not recognise a letter marked Abkhazia, Trans-Dniester, or Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
Letters find their way after being re-routed via other countries. Open up the drop-down box of countries on an internet form and they are unlikely to be listed.
This trio of European statelets are among the few territories in the world, mostly formed by war, which exist on maps but are not full nation states, or members of international organisations.
However, they are self-governing and fairly stable. Life goes on - taxes are collected and children go to school. But it is all a little more complicated than elsewhere in the world.
Soldiers travel by bus through Tiraspol, the capital of Trans-Dniester
Of the world's contested states, Taiwan is by far the biggest. Yet despite it being independent to all intents and purposes since 1949, China regards it as part of its own territory which "must and will be reunited". It is recognised by fewer than 20 countries and is not a UN member.
At the other end of the scale, the Islamic State group proclaimed a state straddling Syria and Iraq which existed for three years, but was never recognised by any countries.
Abkhazia, Trans-Dniester (also known as Transdniestria or Transnistria) and northern Cyprus are somewhere in the middle. All three emerged out of conflicts which remain unresolved.
The breakaway region of Abkhazia won a war of secession with Georgia in 1992-93 and declared independence in 1999. In 2008, it was recognised by Russia - which Georgia considers an occupying force - and a handful of other states.
Trans-Dniester also emerged as the Soviet Union fractured into smaller states, breaking away from Moldova after a brief war in 1992.
Turkish Cypriots declared a state even earlier, in 1983, nine years after the political crisis and conflict in which Turkey invaded the north of the island. The UN continues to patrol the dividing Green Line and reunification talks have never succeeded.
A woman and her dog sunbathe next to the Black Sea border between Russia and Abkhazia
Each has a government and, although they are far from receiving international recognition, there is no sign of them collapsing.
This qualifies them as "de facto states" - places that govern their own territory, but which are outside the international system.
Importantly, all three of these breakaway territories have a powerful patron - Russia in the case of Abkhazia and Trans-Dniester, and Turkey in the case of northern Cyprus.
The patron helps them to survive - providing financial and military backing and stationing troops there.
But even if Russia or Turkey were to reduce support, these breakaway territories would not just melt away.
A Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus flag painted on to a hillside in Nicosia, northern Cyprus
The international community does not think about these places very often - or the underlying problems that keep them in their strange state of limbo.
Interest in the de facto states is often from lovers of "places that don't exist", particularly in the cases of Abkhazia and Trans-Dniester.
Lack of formal recognition certainly leads to over-compensation in the production of state symbols.
They have developed quasi-state paraphernalia worthy of Freedonia - the Marx Brothers' fictitious state in Duck Soup - or the Republic of Zubrowka, from Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel.
Abkhazia prints exotic stamps with an eye on collectors around the world.
Trans-Dniester still has Soviet-era insignia on its symbols, such as the hammer and sickle. It prints its own currency, the Trans-Dniester rouble, which can only be used inside its borders.
Uniquely in the world it prints plastic coins in different shapes, which make them easily identifiable for blind people, and which fetch high prices on eBay.
Yet while they may be idiosyncratic, it is a stretch nowadays to call the trio "rogue states".
That is not to say they are without problems. Human trafficking, for example, is a big issue in both northern Cyprus and Trans-Dniester.
Yet the main impression a visitor to these places would have is of their ordinariness.
All have traffic lights, traffic police, hospitals and other trappings of more "normal" states.
Shoppers sit in cafes glancing at smartphones - even if the coffee they drink is not brewed by a global brand like Starbucks.
And despite their home state having almost zero prospect of wide international recognition, people have the same goals as those anywhere else.
Businesses want foreign trade, students want scholarships abroad.
The states follow many European norms voluntarily. None of them has the death penalty and all hold quite strongly competitive elections - even if the pool of candidates is quite limited.
A group of men play Okey in Nicosia, northern Cyprus
However, a place cannot live by postage stamps alone - it needs to collect those tax revenues and to make sure the police force and school system work.
That gives the outside world and would-be conflict mediators some leverage and influence - something that is only being used to a limited extent at present.
Offers of help with education and health could be accompanied by calls for co-operation on the extradition of fugitives, for example.
To a degree that is already happening with Trans-Dniester, which has quietly signed up to Moldova's free trade agreement with the European Union.
It has also made an agreement that means cars from Trans-Dniester can travel abroad with neutral-looking number plates registered in Moldova. And diplomas from Trans-Dniester's main university can be registered internationally.
Visually the place may still look like a Soviet theme park, with its statues of Lenin and hammers and sickles, but it is actually moving in another direction.
As one former official said to me: "My head is in Russia, but my legs are moving towards Europe."
Young women at an ice cream stall in Trans-Dniester
With full resolution of these disputes still far off, this model of incremental change and international engagement offers an alternative way forward.
If the three territories will not be reintegrated into their parent states of Cyprus, Georgia and Moldova in the near future, at least their residents - but not their governments - could become part of the global community.
Without giving them recognition, de facto states can be more predictable and better aligned with their neighbours.
Over the longer term, the deep-rooted conflicts that created these de facto states could be a little bit easier to overcome.
Just do not hold your breath. They promise to be around for a long time to come.
Over 30 journalists – including Jamal Khashoggi – have been murdered so far this year. With the help of colleagues and relatives, or in their own words and pictures, we pay tribute to some of them here. Maharram Durrani, 1990–30 April 2018 A trainee producer and presenter at Radio Azadi in Afghanistan, Durrani was one of at least nine journalists killed by a suicide bomb while making her way to work in Kabul.
Malali Bashir, a journalist, TV and video producer for RFE/RL’s Afghan service and a colleague of Durrani: “The bomb was a deliberate attack on journalists. As they lost their lives one by one, the whole office was in shock. I can’t explain the situation we were in. We didn’t stop the broadcast. Everything was live ... We were being professional, we were giving the facts, we were being balanced, but still, it was emotional because you lost a colleague that was in contact with you yesterday.
“Maharram had been hired to work on a weekly programme focused on women’s rights and women’s issues. She was the main financial supporter of her family. She told her father she would be like a son, she would be the breadwinner. Her father said she refused to get married because she wanted to keep supporting her family financially. He said she was very courageous and brave.
“She was a soft-spoken, very modest person but with great potential as a journalist. We don’t have many females on the ground, especially women who are very interested in covering issues related to women. This is a tragedy. She was still in training ... she didn’t even finish the first programme.”
Jefferson Pureza Lopes: 17 November 1979–17 January 2018 A producer and radio presenter for Rádio Beria Rio FM in Brazil, Lopes fearlessly criticised local politicians and highlighted corruption. He was shot dead in his living room. No one has been charged with his murder.
On 19 November 2017, a few months before he was killed, the radio station at which Lopes worked was attacked and burnt down. Lopes uploaded a Facebook video showing the wreckage and insisted the station would soon be back on air.
Ibrahim al-Munjar: 1992-17 May 2018 The correspondent for Syrian news website Sy24 was killed outside his house by an unknown group in May.
Ghaith Hammour, the founder of Sy24 and al-Munjar’s editor: “Ibrahim was one of our stringers in the south. He did everything. We don’t have the luxury to have people in front of the camera and behind the camera. When he did videos for us, he was the cameraman, the storyteller and the story editor. He was the one who got the story. He’d tell us how he’d do it and we’d help him to make it better.
“One particularly great story he did was about the children living in Daraa who, at the start of the revolution, did some graffiti calling for Assad to go. Some of these kids were tortured and arrested. In 2018, Ibrahim followed up with one of these kids, now a man. It was one of the best stories he ever did.
“He’d had several threats from Isis and from the regime. He moved house several times, but unfortunately he was killed in front of his house.
“Ibrahim was so quiet, but he had a great eye and developed himself over the years and became one of the best cameramen in the area. When he died, our whole office was devastated. We don’t know who killed him. We can’t be sure, it’s Syria. And Syria is the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist.”
Ján Kuciak: 17 May 1990–21 February 2018
In February, the bodies of Kuciak, an investigative journalist for the Slovakian news website Aktuality.sk, and his fiancee Martina Kušnírová were found in their apartment: both had been shot, with no signs of a struggle.
Pavla Holcová, a Czech journalist who worked alongside Kuciak on his last investigation: “He was a village man in the best sense of that word. He was modest, he didn’t get into fights. He was a silent guy, but the type of man who wants to know how the world works. He loved digging and going through documents and making the mosaic of the information come into focus.
“We worked together on the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers but, for the 18 months leading up to his death, we’d been exploring a huge story about possible links between the Slovak prime minister and a branch of the Italian mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta.
“Jan and his fiancee were planning to get married … His editor called me the morning after their bodies were found and told me I needed to get police protection. We spoke again a day later and agreed that we had to get the story out as quickly as possible, and a coalition of journalists worked on the piece and did incredible work to release it across a number of outlets.
“I didn’t feel much when the Slovak prime minister resigned soon afterwards. My job is to provide information, not to take down politicians. Journalism is facing a kind of crisis around the world. But maybe soon we will hit the bottom, and then we can come up with a better kind of journalism, for the 21st century.”
Leslie Ann Pamela Montenegro del Real: 1982-5 February 2018 The journalist and YouTuber ran a satirical YouTube channel as “La Nana Pelucas” (the Grandma in Wigs), and an online news magazine, El Sillón. She was killed by a gunman who walked into the restaurant she ran with her husband and shot her in the head. Del Real was one of five Mexican journalists murdered this year, along with Jesús Alejandro Márquez Jiménez, Carlos Domínguez Rodríguez, Leobardo Vázquez Atzin and Mario Leonel Gómez Sánchez.
‘Nana Pelucas’ as she called herself poked wicked fun at local politics, corruption and government officials in her regular vlogs, such as this one, where she mocks the relatives of then Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto. She received a number of threats from criminal gangs in the year leading up to her murder.
Musa Abdul Kareem: 1994–31 July 2018
The photographer and editor for the Libyan newspaper Fasanea was abducted by unknown assailants and later found shot dead with signs of torture.
Salima Bin Nozha, Fasanea’s editor-in-chief: “Musa had joined the paper in 2015. He was a humble man, who was happy and full of life. He was a photographer and later also became an editor.
“He loved helping people, especially the poor. He was always giving back to the community. He often raised money to support people on low income or those in desperate need of help. He loved listening to music and enjoyed drawing. If you needed help with anything, he was there.
“There’s a civil war in Libya and extremist groups like Daesh roam freely in the country. There’s no safety here or the rule of law. Everyone does what they want. In 2017, another colleague of mine was killed and, separately, a female journalist was killed. Journalists are being killed because they are speaking the truth.
“In Libya, we don’t have freedom of speech. It’s very dangerous to be a journalist here. Still, his death came as a huge shock to us. It’s unbelievable that someone like him was kidnapped and murdered. We were horrified by his death. We continue to report because we feel it is our duty to show what’s happening in our country. We’re doing our best to make sure the truth gets out there.”
Rob Hiaasen: February 1959–28 June 2018
Flowers and a hand-written note laid outside the Capitol Gazette offices in Annapolis, US
An assistant editor and columnist at the Capital Gazette in Maryland, US. On 28 June, Jarrod Ramo, who had been sending threats to the newspaper for some time, entered the offices and shot and killed Hiaasen, along with Gerald Fischman, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters.
In May, Hiassen wrote a piece about Mother’s Day:
“I can’t pick up the phone to call my mother any more. Poor, selfish me. But Sunday was our day to talk on the phone. She was in Florida; me in Maryland, as was our chronic geography.
“Because of her, I came to believe the only questions worth asking are personal. What a gift for someone to lay low in silence just to hear your answer. It’s how people begin to trust one another. It’s how people fall in love, you know. Might be how we stay in love.
“If you’re lucky, you don’t wait too damn long to grow up and appreciate your parents. (She would not have used damn and would have questioned my use of it. So, in her honor, a redo.)
“If you’re lucky, you don’t wait too long to grow up and appreciate your parents.”
Shujaat Bukhari: 25 February 1968–14 June 2018 Bullet marks seen on the car of Shujaat Bukhari after he was attacked in Srinagar, India. The senior journalist and founder of Rising Kashmir, a Kashmiri daily paper, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Srinagar, India.
Sameer Yasir, a senior journalist and friend: “Shujaat would go out of his way to help you if you had a problem. I was once stuck in an airport in Colombo and I had a friend with me and he had some visa problem. I told him we had a problem here and he called someone in Sri Lanka and got it fixed. He was that kind of man.
“Just before he was killed, I saw his car moving and I waved my hand towards him and he was smiling. He always had this special smile. He said he’d call me back or maybe he’d send a text message.
“If you’re Kashmiri and you’re the editor of a newspaper here, it’s a very difficult job. You have to walk a very thin line; you don’t want to piss off militants, you don’t want to piss off the army, you don’t want to piss off the Indian state, you don’t want to piss off the Pakistanis. You’re stuck between so many players.”
Paúl Rivas Bravo: 25 April 1972–April 2018 Friends and colleagues of kidnapped journalists demand their freedom in Quito, Ecuador. The photojournalist for Ecuadorian daily El Comercio was on an assignment with the journalist Javier Ortega and driver Efraín Segarra when the three were abducted by a dissident drug trafficking group and killed.
Ana Maria Carvejal, a friend and colleague: “Everyone loved Paul. He made friends everywhere he went because he was always interested in people’s stories: the guy who looked after the car, the waiter, the taxi driver or whoever was taking him on a boat ride.
“His last trip was to an area on the border between Ecuador and Colombia. Since the peace agreement in Colombia that demobilised the Farc, some of the criminal elements within the old guerrilla groups are still armed, and engaged in drug trafficking and other activities. I spoke with him in the morning, but then I sent him other messages and he did not answer, and I began to worry. The next morning, the government confirmed that he, Javier and Efraín had been kidnapped.
“We formed a collective, #NosFaltan3 [“we’re missing three”] and went every night to the government centre to pressure the state to do as much as possible for their freedom. But a couple of weeks later, on April 13, we received the horrible news that they had been killed. Eight months have passed since the kidnapping and, seven months after the murder, it is still hard to believe that this happened.
“There is still very little progress with the investigation of his murder. It is very important to keep talking about him in all possible spaces. We want everyone to know that Paul was a sensitive man, straightforward, cheerful, smiling, teasing, supportive, protective, that these three men were great professionals and beautiful people.”
When Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia convened an outdoor banquet this spring for his fellow Arab rulers, seated among the kings, princes and presidents were two friends with few qualifications other than their closeness to the young prince himself: a poet who has become known for orchestrating ferocious social media campaigns, and a former security guard who runs the Saudi sports commission.
The two men had each played pivotal roles in many of the brazen power plays that have marked Prince Mohammed’s sprint to dominance of the kingdom — the ouster of the previous crown prince, the detentions of royals and businessmen in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton, the kidnapping of the Lebanese prime minister, and the kingdom’s diplomatic spats with Qatar and Canada. Even Saudi royals have come to fear the prince’s two friends — Saud el-Qahtani, 40, and Turki al-Sheikh, 37 — and the Arab potentates around the table could scarcely object to their presence.
Now the killing of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents has focused attention on their roles as enablers of the crown prince’s impulsiveness and aggression, and Saudi watchers consider the men’s fate a bellwether of the royal court’s direction as it grapples with the international outrage over the killing.
“They are the closest people to the crown prince,” said Kristin Smith Diwan, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “They are his political enforcers and the face of the brash new ‘Saudi first’ posture at home and abroad, and those opposed to the hypernationalist, thuggish direction in Saudi foreign policy would be happy to see them cut down to size.”
Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, right, pictured with Saad Hariri, the prime minister-designate of Lebanon, in Riyadh last month. The Saudis briefly kidnapped Mr. Hariri last year.CreditCreditTasneem Alsultan for The New York Times
Neither man is among the 18 people Saudi Arabia says it has arrested in the course of its investigation into Mr. Khashoggi’s killing.
But the kingdom has already assigned some blame for the killing to Mr. Qahtani, the social-media czar. He lost his title as an adviser to the royal court because he contributed to the vitriolic rhetoric toward the kingdom’s critics that led to Mr. Khashoggi’s death, a Saudi official said. It is unclear which of his many duties Mr. Qahtani has relinquished.
Mr. Sheikh, the sports commissioner, was in New York for medical treatment during the killing, according to Saudis who know him, and has since avoided the spotlight.
Mr. Khashoggi, who was a Saudi insider before fleeing the kingdom last year to live in Virginia and write columns for The Washington Post, had said the two men exemplified what was dangerous about Prince Mohammed.
The crown prince “does not have political advisers except Turki al-Sheikh and Saud al-Qahtani,” Mr. Khashoggi said in private comments published by Newsweek after his death. “They are very thuggish. People fear them. You challenge them, you might end up in prison.”
Mr. Qahtani did not respond to messages seeking comment. Mr. Sheikh did not respond to a request for comment sent to the sports commission.
Both men run portfolios — social media and sports — that resonate with the large population of young Saudis whom Prince Mohammed has courted as his base. Both have sought to fire up the fierce nationalism that the prince has encouraged by pouring money into battles against rivals in stadiums or on the internet.
Although neither portfolio relates to foreign affairs, foreign envoys often seek out the two men because of their influence, said Dennis Horak, the former Canadian ambassador to Riyadh who was expelled in August after other Canadian diplomats called for the release of detained rights activists.
Saudi Arabia’s sports minister, Turki al-Sheikh, right, interrupts a training session of the Saudi national soccer team to talk to players in Moscow in June.CreditAbedin Taherkenareh/EPA, via Shutterstock
Mr. Sheikh was approachable while Mr. Qahtani “had a much fiercer reputation,” Mr. Horak said. The pair, he said, was “not so much good cop-bad cop, more bad cop and lesser-bad cop.”
Like Prince Mohammed, neither was well known before the prince’s father, King Salman, ascended the throne in 2015. Both were educated inside the kingdom with scant experience abroad.
Critics in the kingdom say that they sometimes failed to understand the dynamics of Western politics and culture, like when Mr. Qahtani orchestrated the plastering of billboards and trucks in London with his boss’s photo during the crown prince’s visit there last spring — to the derision of Londoners unaccustomed to foreign personality cults.
But each man had skills the prince treasured.
Mr. Qahtani, who held an undergraduate law degree and wrote poetry, had been recruited to work in the royal court more than a decade ago. He gained a deep understanding of the royal family’s secrets that members and associates of the royal family say he later exploited to help Prince Mohammed plot his rise and eliminate his rivals.
He also appears to have developed an interest in hacking. As early as 2009, someone using credentials associated with Mr. Qahtani was trawling amateur hacking forums to learn about surveillance software, according to images of the posts captured by other forum members.
In 2012, someone using Mr. Qahtani’s government email address solicited services from the Italian spyware company Hacking Team, according emails later released by WikiLeaks. In one email, the writer sought a visit by people with “high technical knowledge” to “explain the solutions you offer and training and costs.”
“Will bear all the costs of the trip from A-Z,” the author of the email added.
Mr. Qahtani has become Prince Mohammed’s chief propagandist. With a Twitter following of 1.36 million users, he solicited names for a blacklist of enemies of the kingdom and then marshaled mass social media attacks against them, commanding followers his critics have called “electronic flies.” His work has earned him the nicknames Lord of the Flies, Mr. Hashtag and “Saudi Arabia’s Steve Bannon.”
Mr. Sheikh was a bodyguard in Prince Mohammed’s security detail who charmed the prince with his sense of humor and intense loyalty, said associates of the royal family who know both men. Roughly the same age, they developed a personal rapport, and the prince rewarded Mr. Sheikh with a seemingly limitless budget to make the kingdom an international contender in tennis, boxing, soccer and other sports. He has welcomed wrestling legend Hulk Hogan to Riyadh and last April, he joked in the ring about keeping for himself the championship belt for the WWE’s Greatest Royal Rumble.
The moment when Turki al-Shaikh handed over Saudi Arabia and Brown Stroman's Saudi Cup CreditVideo by كل شي
In an extension of his royally financed campaign to build a sports empire, Mr. Sheikh became the honorary president of one of the most successful and popular soccer teams in Egypt, an honor widely believed to reflect heavy investments of money from the crown prince. But Mr. Sheikh resigned in a dispute with the board after just a few months and instead bankrolled his own rival franchise, Pyramid. He recruited three star Brazilian players and launched a sports channel dedicated to his team, reportedly pouring in as much as $33 million.
But he complained publicly that Egyptian referees, fans and commentators were failing to appreciate his investments, and said he had asked Egypt’s president to intervene. In September, a stadium of Egyptian soccer fans broke out in vulgar chants denouncing Mr. Sheikh and the Saudis, and he responded by abandoning the team.
“Strange attacks from everywhere, and a new story every day,” he wrote on Facebook. “Why the headache?”
Mr. Sheikh also splurged last September on a $4.8 million limited edition Bugatti Chiron sports car, according to a sales contract obtained by The New York Times. The seller, the Emirati businessman Saeed Mohammed Butti Alqubaisi, declined to comment.
When an entertainment program on the Saudi-owned satellite network MBC last year seemed to hint at a rumored affair between Mr. Sheikh and an Egyptian singer, Mr. Sheikh ordered the network to fire the production team, according to industry executives familiar with the case. The show remains off the air.
Electronic billboards in London showing Prince Mohammed in ads with the hashtag #ANewSaudiArabia.CreditChris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images
Both men played signal roles in Prince Mohammed’s rise. In June 2017, Mr. Sheikh and Mr. Qahtani were among a handful of Prince Mohammed’s loyalists who forcibly detained the previous crown prince and interior minister, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, holding him overnight and threatening him until he agreed to give up his claim to the throne, according to members and associates of the royal family.
In a video made the next day, Mr. Sheikh can be seen hovering behind the ousted prince as he pledges allegiance to Mohammed bin Salman. A social media campaign spread rumors that a cocaine addiction had made the ousted prince unfit to rule, and people close to the royal family said Mr. Qahtani fueled the rumors.
Both men sprang into action again when Saudi Arabia led a blockade of its tiny neighbor Qatar in June 2017, over its support for political Islam. They unleashed insults and promoted hashtags bashing Qatar, and Mr. Qahtani forced MBC to stop airing Turkish soap operas because of Turkey’s support for Qatar, costing the network millions in losses, according to industry executives.
He also persuaded Prince Mohammed to spend more than $100,000 on American television commercials denouncing Qatar, evidently unaware of how few Americans were following the Gulf dispute.
A Qatari-owned network, BeIN Sports, had acquired the exclusive rights to broadcast this year’s World Cup in the Arab world. So Mr. Qahtani helped promote BeoutQ, a bootleg operation beamed from Riyadh-based Arabsat. BeoutQ ripped live events from BeIN’s feed and broadcast the games without paying for rights, spurring international lawsuits. The Saudi government has denied any relationship to the pirate network.
Both men also played key roles again last fall when Crown Prince Mohammed arbitrarily detained hundreds of the kingdom’s richest businessmen and several of his royal cousins in a Ritz-Carlton hotel in what was billed as a crackdown on corruption — just a few weeks after Mr. Sheikh had picked up his $4.8 million Bugatti.
Both men acted as interrogators, demanding that the captives confess to corrupt self-enrichment and pledge to surrender vast sums, according to relatives and close associates of several detainees. Although blindfolded during some interrogations, detainees told relatives that they saw the two men or recognized their voices from broadcast interviews. Others said that through hotel room windows, they saw Mr. Sheikh coming and going surrounded by armed guards.
Several former detainees have reported physical mistreatment during the interrogations, including beatings, electrical shocks and suspension upside down for long periods.
Some have shown their family members lasting scars from the beatings and shocks, and in one case photographs of the bruises and scars have been shared with The New York Times; some of the pictures included the electronic monitoring bracelet that the government has forced released detainees to wear to track their movements. One was forced to make his consent to a forced confession with only a thumb print because he was too incapacitated to write out his signature, according to a relative informed by the detainee.
Although no evidence has emerged that either man directly abused the captives, both questioned detainees who had been abused.
The government of Saudi Arabia has called the allegations of physical abuse “absolutely untrue.”
A few weeks after his release from the Ritz, Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, once the kingdom’s wealthiest investor, made a donation of more than a half-million dollars to a Saudi soccer club, writing on Twitter that he was “responding to the invitation of my brother Turki al-Sheikh.”
Neither Mr. Qahtani nor Mr. Sheikh have commented publicly on the killing of Mr. Khashoggi. But Mr. Qahtani, who lost his title as a royal court adviser, appears to believe his days of serving the prince are not over.
After his dismissal, he tweeted his thanks to the king and crown prince for “this great opportunity to have the honor to serve the homeland.”
“I will remain a loyal servant of my country forever,” he added.
