Eylul Deniz Yasar

Journalist, Videographer

Turkey

Trilingual (Turkish, English, German) investigative journo with a penchant for visual storytelling, based in Istanbul, Turkey, focusing on politics, human rights with occasional forays into cultures, art, and travel. Fond of representing the human condition turning the eyes on topics deemed as taboo and social identities which are discriminated against, othered and disenfranchised such as the homeless people, Kurds, LGBTIs, the most disadvantaged working-class people. Skilled in camera work, editing, photography, and feature writing with 7 years of writing & 5 years of video journalism experience.

Former political editor and Turkey correspondent of Medya News international news portal. Published features & articles in Turkey's national media outlets Gazette Duvar, Mesopotamia Agency & Birikim magazine. Works appeared: in ARTE, Belfast Telegraph, RT, Spectee News. Member of independent video activist collective Seyri Sokak since 2017. Below are some of my work in English. More samples and references are available upon request.
Contact via: [email protected]

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Portfolio
Medya News
‘Feminist Night March’ in Istanbul: The marchers destroyed the borders of political polarization...

The massive and colourful rally in Istanbul, which united women and people of different ethnicities and sexual orientations, as well as people speaking different languages, created a rich political environment and platform for some of the most-marginalized communities in the country. The ‘Feminist Night March’ enabled positive and unexpected encounters and cultural crossings to take place.

Medya News
Dengbej: The musical preservation of Kurdish myths, testimonies and history

Dengbêjs have a significant place in Kurdish history, transmitting the pain and the joy of the Kurds over generations through their songs. Memorizing the events of their time, dengbêjs record what they have witnessed, presenting oral histories. Dengbêjs have, therefore, recorded events and preserved ancient memory through myth, culture and literature. They have also preserved oral histories and witness accounts that are ignored or discarded by 'official' Turkish history.

Medya News
Hasankeyf submerged by a Turkish dam – Part 2: Bio-politics as an ‘ecological war tool’

In this second part of the series, local environmental activists from Batman, Turkey spoke to Eylul Deniz Yasar about the environmental impacts of the Ilısu dam and their ecological struggle to protect Hasankeyf and the Tigris valley from the impacts of the Ilısu dam – a massive hydroelectric dam, the first turbines of which were switched on by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Medya News
Five years on, the Ak family is homeless in Sur

A few women sit on the ground, drinking tea, in front of a tiny shop (‘bakkal’) in Alipasa neighbourhood, which is reached by following Diyarbakır/Sur’s labyrinthine streets. One of them, Mevlude Ak, is an elderly woman wearing a white scarf, which is characteristic of Kurdish mothers. When I asked her for a glass of tea, she smiled and welcomed her guest warmly. As tea glasses were emptied and filled, it was revealed that Ak family had not only tea, but also a story to share.

Medya News
Seeing the ‘ghosts’ of Afrin with Meghan Bodette

What has been happening in Afrin has been going on before the eyes of the world for the last three years, but Afrin’s truth is still waiting to be brought into the day light. Eylul Deniz Yasar questioned the hidden facts of Afrin in an exclusive interview with the independent researcher and the founder of the “Missing Afrin Women Project” Meghan Bodette, discussing key issues of gender-based violence, women’s engagement in war and women’s political representation in North East Syria in an...

Medya News
Hasankeyf submerged by a Turkish dam – Part 1: Socio-economic destruction

Hasankeyf, an ancient town in Turkey’s south-eastern province of Batman (Êlih) – with a history of 12,000 years of human settlement – was engulfed in 2019 by the reservoir of a controversial hydroelectric dam project. It has not only been traces of the Silk Road or remains from the Roman Empire that have vanished, but also vast unexplored archaeological treasures which will irreversibly deteriorate underwater. In this first of a two-part series, the residents and the shopkeepers of the...

Medya News
A novel written by a Kurdish prisoner was also ‘arrested’

Kurdish political prisoner Bager Sayak has turned 11 years of incarceration in a Turkish prison into a process of literary expression and began a novel writing project consisting of a three-part trilogy. Prison authorities in Turkey have seized his literary work as they have neither returned the manuscript to him nor posted it to his family for nine months, essentially imprisoning the novel as they have the author!

Medya News
‘The problem in Belarus goes back to Moscow and Ankara’

There is a political background to the crisis currently revolving around the migrants on the Polish-Belarusian border, and the European media seems to address either one of the two governments as being solely responsible for the ongoing crisis, but what about the roles of other actors?