The journalist and new PEN President Deniz Yücel speaks about his imprisonment in Turkey, the question of why freedom of expression is sometimes in danger not only because of the bad guys and why he has lost his passion for German debates.
A meeting in Berlin-Mitte, a few meters from the Springer building. Yücel is late, he still had to call a friend who has just been released from Silivri, the prison in which Yücel was incarcerated from February 2017 to February 2018, where the two shared a yard. There could hardly be a better reason for a delay. Yücel, who has just been elected President of the authors’ association PEN Germany, laughs a lot, curses a lot, talks a lot. Is funny, passionate and in a good mood. The son of Turkish guest workers, world-Journalist and former political prisoner comes across as someone who has never had anything bad happened to them in their life.