Kickstarter

Istanbul, the world capital of conspiracies, espionage, intrigue, and cliched journalism …

Claire, a novelist and freelance writer, and Okan, a documentary filmmaker, are independent journalists who live in Istanbul. We’ve had it with press coverage of this region that relies eternally on the same recycled handful of tired sources, uncritically repeats partisan propaganda, and sheds more heat than light. The coverage of the Mavi Marmara flotilla fiasco was the last straw: If this is a media war, we decided, someone needs to be shooting straight.

We’re on a mission to find out what’s really going on here. We’re going to speak to the people you never hear from, ask the questions that never seem to get asked, and try to figure out just what the hell is really going on in this corner of the Orient.

This will basically be an experiment in independent journalism. We have biases—of course we do—but we’ll be forthright about them. We let our subjects speak for themselves (although we’re sometimes inclined to argue with them). We look for evidence, not propaganda. We will cover perspectives of all who were involved in the incident as well as of all who were not there but have directly or indirectly been affected by the incident, whether they are individuals, institutions or states.

Consequently, we will get to the bottom of it and expose how the incident relates to the American people and the West. We've started filming the project, but will need the funds to complete filming and post-production.

We have put together a video of the footage of the interviews already shot to give you a sense of what the project will entail. Hope you will enjoy it.