The process launched on February 27 following the call by Abdullah Öcalan is approaching its first anniversary. Despite efforts by the Turkish government to slow the process and drag its feet, the hope for peace has been welcomed positively by the peoples of Turkey and Kurdistan. The insistence of the government and its supporters on war, meanwhile, is finding diminishing support.
Journalist and photojournalist Ramazan Öztürk, who has followed wars both across the Middle East and in many parts of the world, and whose photographs introduced the world to the Halabja Massacre, describes the current developments by saying, “Wherever the possibility of peace emerges, time slows down.” Öztürk has documented wars and their aftermath in 107 countries through documentary reporting.
Öztürk shared his experiences from a journalism career that began in 1975, his reflections on the power of photography, and recent developments in Kurdistan when he spoke to ANF.
Photograph is a mirror; it reflects what it sees
Journalist Ramazan Öztürk said he sees himself as a news photographer and stressed that he both takes photographs and writes news stories, describing photography as a mirror and continued: “I am a news photographer. I am a journalist, but I both take the photograph and write the story. It has been this way since the first day I entered the profession. For me, photography is a mirror; it reflects whatever it sees. Of course, I separate those who manipulate. I believe that a single photograph can, on its own, convey an event that you could not fully explain even in volumes of books.
Photography is, in fact, humanity’s common language, and at the same time a pure form of human expression. In this sense, photography can carry the moment it freezes into the future exactly as it is, without changing it, as long as there is no intervention. For me, photography is a mirror that does not create doubts such as ‘Is it really like this?’ or ‘Is this truly how it was?’”
Öztürk stated that he has witnessed many wars and post-war realities in 107 countries around the world and has been present at numerous historical turning points. He said: “In the past 30 to 35 years, I have gone to almost all the wars that took place. I spent years going to the Iran–Iraq War and documented the post-war period in both Iran and Iraq. The Halabja Massacre, the First and Second Gulf Wars, the war in Bosnia, the war in Kosovo, the uprising in Albania, the Chechnya–Russia War, the coup attempt against Yeltsin in Russia…
There is also the war in our own country, the conflict in Kurdistan. That war never truly ended; it continued constantly. I followed the fighting in Afghanistan, and I also returned after wars to produce documentary reports on their aftermath.
I produced 107 documentary news reports in 107 countries that experienced major turning points. I went to Vietnam after the war and documented the deep scars the war left on human life for generations. I recorded the effects of the toxic gases used there and their impact on people. In Cambodia, I prepared documentaries on the consequences of the Pol Pot regime, and in Mozambique, I documented life after the civil war.”
A photograph can start a war or end one
Journalist Ramazan Öztürk said a single photograph can carry the power to either start a war or bring one to an end, stressing that images from the Halabja Massacre served as proof that the regime of Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons.
Öztürk said, “A photograph can be so powerful that it can cause a war to begin or to end. As an example of a war coming to an end, we can point to the photograph from Vietnam showing the moment a Viet Cong guerrilla was executed with a gun pressed to his head. That single frame exposed the Vietnam War to the eyes of the world.
For example, the ‘silent witness’ photograph from the Halabja Massacre revealed that Saddam Hussein used poison gas both during the Iran–Iraq War and against his own citizens. At the time, Iran’s leader Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani thanked me. He told me, ‘For eight and a half years, we tried to explain at the United Nations that chemical gas was being used against us, but we could not convince anyone because everyone was supporting Saddam. You proved it as a journalist, and this led to the war ending.’
Now imagine a brutal dictatorial regime committing a mass genocide against an ethnic group or a community of belief and imagine a photograph that documents it. The Halabja Massacre became evidence against Saddam in Iraq. Even George H. W. Bush said, ‘We will come to avenge this baby.’”
My job is to take the photograph and make the public see and act
Journalist Ramazan Öztürk said a photographer’s primary responsibility is to take photographs and that the power and impact of photography must be properly understood.
Öztürk also said: “I never hesitated about whether I should take photographs in a war zone or not. There were photographs I chose not to publish, but they were not from conflict areas. In conflict zones, it was the opposite, I wanted to take photographs so that the world’s public could know what was happening. I did it both out of conscience and so that, if intervention was necessary, that intervention could take place. The public had to know what was going on there.
There is a well-known photograph from Africa: a starving child with a vulture waiting nearby. People exaggerate that example. I am a human being first, then a journalist. Should the child be saved, or should the photograph be taken? I would not save the child; I would take the photograph. With that photograph, I would shake the world. Because that child is going to die anyway, who will know? Millions of children will die. But when I take that photograph, I actually save the child.
In a war environment, if someone is being lined up to be executed, I do not intervene, because I could be executed as well. And if they are executing one person, they are executing thousands. That is why I take the photograph, just as in the Vietnam example.”
Öztürk said he never hesitated to take photographs but chose not to publish some of them, and explained one such case. He said: “There is a very striking photograph that I took but never published. I was in Iran interviewing Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. No one thought it was possible to get an appointment. I had a cameraman with me during the meeting and asked him to take photographs of me.
Before I went, I had copied the Halabja photographs and also took several copies of Sabah newspaper that had published those images. In the past, when you traveled to Iran with newspapers or magazines, if there was a photo of an uncovered woman, they would black it out. But because my visit had been announced in advance, they did not touch my papers. I took five or six copies of Sabah with me.
I went in and sat down. Turkey’s ambassador in Ankara was with me. Acting in good faith, I stood up, took the Sabah newspaper, and wanted to show the Halabja photographs. They were on the front page, but I also wanted to show the inside pages. When I opened the paper next to him, the second page revealed a pin-up photo. Rafsanjani did not react, but the faces of the ambassador and the consul general in Istanbul went pale. I photographed Rafsanjani looking at the second-page pin-up in Sabah.
I could have given that photograph anywhere, and it would have made the front page. But I said to myself, ‘I will not do this.’ It was a human matter. He did not look at it deliberately, and I did not show it deliberately. I said I would not publish it and I still have not.”