Sevan Nişanyan

Guillaume Perrier, Laure Marchand

Over the course of the eleven years during which they lived and worked in Istanbul, journalists Laure Marchand and Guillaume Perrier witnessed firsthand evidence of over a century of denialist politics and Kemalist rhetoric in Turkey. In this video they reflect on the imprisonment of the Turkish-Armenian intellectual, journalist and activist Sevan Nişanyan, who was arrested in 2014 and sentenced to over 16 years in prison on charges of carrying out illegal construction. A Turkish citizen by birth, Nişanyan is an ardent critic of the increasingly repressive government of Turkey, and his arrest is seen by many as a political act that carries wider implications for the state’s policies towards political dissenters and minorities.

Produced by AGBU WebTalks in partnership with the Zoryan Institute.

Originally published January 2017.

About the speaker

Guillaume Perrier, Laure Marchand
Guillaume Perrier, Laure Marchand

Guillaume Perrier, Laure Marchand

Guillaume Perrier is a French journalist and writer. He was a correspondent for Le Monde in Turkey from 2005 to 2014 and covered all major events in the region. Laure Marchand is a French journalist and writer. She was Le Figaro's correspondent in Istanbul from 2006 to 2014. Together they co-authored La Turquie et le Fantôme Arménien (Turkey and the Armenian Ghost) (Actes Sud), an award-winning book translated into Turkish (Iletisim, 2014) and English (McGill-Queen’s University Press) on the centennial of the Armenian Genocide in April 2015.

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