Exile has millions of faces in the 21st century. Uprooted gathers their stories: each and every one a unique tale deserving of an audience. Sad as it is, the mere existence of this community is encouraging and inspiring. Presenting their problems to a wider audience is a necessity, a political intervention in a changing world.
'Exile is a dream of a glorious return. Exile is a vision of revolution […] It is an endless paradox: looking forward by always looking back. The exile is a ball thrown high into the air,’ writes Salman Rushdie in The Satanic Verses, the book that drove him into exile.
Every day, many leave their homelands for political, economic, or social reasons. Exile is nothing less than brain drain, impoverishing the land left behind of invaluable knowledge and experience.
As a member of this community, Turkish journalist Can Dündar meets people living in this endless paradox, reorganizing their lives under the most challenging conditions, experiencing loss, and encountering new opportunities.
Not only is this platform a gathering of diverse voices, but it also is an opportunity for the people of the host countries to take a more humanistic look at the notorious refugee problem.
What you will read here are scenes from Can’s encounters: portraits, conversations, observations, outcries, personal memories, and artistic works from the exile community of our time.
Turkish journalist Can Dündar has been living in exile since July 2016.
In 2015 he was arrested after his newspaper Cumhuriyet published evidence of Turkey delivering weapons to Syrian jihadists. The recipient of many international press and freedom awards, Dündar is one of the leading figures of Reporters Without Borders’ Information and Democracy Commission, and the editor-in-chief of exile radio station Özgürüz ('We Are Free').
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