Bunyamin Aygun, an award-winning Turkish photojournalist who was captured by Islamic State (IS) militants last November and held for 40 days, is the first and only journalist held by IS to go public with his ordeal. Aygun’s account, which ran for five days in his newspaper, Milliyet, offers a rare and nuanced glimpse into the murky world of IS. Published in January, the series revealed the heavy presence of Turks in the group and the glaring threat that they pose to their own country. “Turkey is next,” IS fighters repeatedly told the veteran journalist. But the story received scant attention.
In Turkey, a massive corruption scandal implicating Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his close circle held the nation in thrall. The few stories that appeared in Western outlets were short and dry. Aygun had not revealed that his captors were IS at the time. But would it have made much of a difference? Probably not, because Aygun is not a Westerner. He is a Muslim and a Turk. Besides, Mosul had not yet been overrun, nor had all 49 members of the Turkish consulate there been taken hostage by IS. And James Foley’s brutal execution had not yet taken place.
The public's thirst for information about IS in the aftermath of this barbaric act is seemingly unquenchable. And Aygun’s story is a gold mine. I decided to contact Aygun to hear it firsthand. (I was unable to do so at the time of his release because I was in hospital.) We met on a recent evening in a cafe facing Gezi Park, where Aygun had shot powerful images of the mass demonstrations that rocked Istanbul the summer before. Aygun is square-jawed and wiry with dark, soulful eyes. “I’ll only be drinking coffee, lots of it,” he announces.
Aygun was among the first Turkish journalists to start covering the Syrian conflict when it erupted in mid-2011. “Being Turkish was a real advantage,” he recalls. “The people loved us, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) loved us.” Syria became his regular beat and Aygun would doggedly record the violence and suffering that unfolded before his eyes. Like many journalists, Aygun romanticized the rebels in the early days of the war. “Ordinary people sold everything they owned to keep the revolution going, I believed in it, too,” he says.
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