The pursuit of “freedom” has been a central theme throughout my entire life. Alas, every time I felt it was within my grasp, it would vanish, only to reveal itself again, in a different form, luring me on to yet another quest.

During my youth, like many of my peers, I tried to seize my freedom by rebelling against authority. Then early in my career my pursuit of freedom leads me to join the women’s rights movement in a patriarchal society. And throughout my career in media, I worked tirelessly to champion and expand the space for freedom of expression.

Even though media is a very effective arena for expressing all kinds of freedom, often times I was not satisfied with simply reporting from a distance. I wanted to be closer to those fighting for their freedom and to empower them.

In August 2009 I was the CEO of Hürriyet, the country’s leading daily newspaper at that time. One sleepless night while responding to unanswered messages in my inbox, I received an email from a Sudanese woman. Lubna al-Huseyin was a journalist living in Khartoum, Sudan. She was writing to colleagues around the world and calling for help. Just a few days ago she had been arrested and detained by local police as she was sharing a meal in a restaurant with friends. Some of them had been sentenced to 40 lashes each simply because they were wearing trousers. Lubna, had defied the sentence and demanded a trial. She was calling on other journalists for help.

As I read Lubna’s email, I knew I had to join her in Sudan. Despite extreme unrest in the country, the next day I boarded a plane to Khartoum, together with a photojournalist from Hurriyet, to find Lubna and to support her in person at her trial.

Lubna’s call was not simply a cry for personal justice. She was speaking out on behalf of all Sudanese women and girls to voice their rights. She needed to be heard, acknowledged and understood. The best way for me to let Lubna know that she had been heard was by doing more than simply publishing yet another article on her cause. To show my strong support, I also needed to be physically present for her during her trial. Unfortunately, there was a weak presentation of the international media- Reuters was the only international media present other than Hurriyet. That day, Lubna’s trial was postponed minutes before it began because of political pressure. Amidst turmoil outside the courtroom, in a serendipitous moment, I was able to find Lubna and give her my full support. The moment she saw me, with tears brimming in her eyes she said, “Unfortunately, we never had Ataturk in Sudan.”

For most of my life, I thought the pursuit of freedom was only about fighting for fundamental rights and liberties. In the later phases of my media career, however, I started to question my core belief that fighting for freedom is the only path to true liberty.

This inquisitive period was prompted by some unusual circumstances:

The troublesome effects of polarization had seeped into every segment of the Turkish society. Media was not immune to this contentious atmosphere. Journalism had become like walking along a thin tight rope. It was a time of intolerance in a fragmented society.

Readers were no longer seeking independent and neutral fact-based reporting by the media. Rather, all stakeholders were demanding news outlets to explicitly pick sides and declare loyalties. In this climate of fear and anger, we were all becoming prisoners of our own making.

During this period, I was quite overwhelmed with fear mixed with bubbling curiosity. I wanted to travel to the other side of the river, to sit with those we deemed “the Other”, and to listen to them without prejudice and without an agenda. Just to listen and to understand.

First, I started by listening to women. I sat with women from completely different backgrounds, geographies, cultures and life experiences to hear their stories with eagerness and curiosity. I tried to listen to each person beyond identities and stereotypes.

Then I set out to hear people with the most complicated and personally challenging stories. I sat with murderers who committed femicide as well as with brothel keepers. After this experience, not only did I discover many new perspectives, but it also sparked an internal journey within my own self, to explore and confront the other layers within myself.

One of my most transformative experiences was during a visit to a women’s shelter discreetly located in a low-income neighborhood of Izmir.

For 15 years I had been working relentlessly against domestic violence. At Hurriyet, we had designed a bold nationwide awareness building campaign on this topic, lobbied for legislation to protect women, and removed the stigma by making its discussion a mainstream public issue. Throughout this initiative, I had visited many shelters and spoken with many survivors of abuse. Yet, none of those encounters had impacted me as profoundly as my conversation with a particular woman, Zeynep, who completely changed my perspective one evening.

Zeynep had a challenging life, beginning with the sadly familiar story of being abandoned as a child and extending to her current life at the shelter. Her difficult experiences at the shelter were similar to other stories I had heard but perhaps, it was the first time I was listening to her words with a deeper intent to understand. I was listening differently because I was a different me.

That day, I had spent the entire day visiting women’s shelters, and was exhausted, depleted. I did not have the emotional or physical strength to listen to one more tragic life story. But I had made a commitment to visit this last shelter on our schedule, so I kept my promise.

A very interesting thing happened while listening to Zeynep in that tiny meeting room. As she spoke, this petite and meek looking woman morphed into a giant, as I shrank into a whisper of myself. The more I surrendered myself to listening to her story, the more our power dynamics were inverted. It was as if I was not there to help her, but rather, as if I was there to borrow courage from her resilience. This encounter shed important light on so many of my own inner conflicts.

It took a while for me to comprehend why this particular experience listening to Zeynep’s story was so exceptional. I was not there to solve her problems, nor was I there to add content to our anti- domestic violence campaign. That evening, in that room, I was only there to listen.

I sat in my chair just to hear Zeynep, and her words transported me far beyond her own story, to the depths of my inner existence that I may never have discovered on my own. Though our stories were completely different from each other, there were so many familiar human experiences and emotions that we shared.

Since then, listening has become my passion. My curiosity for learning about “the Other” was surpassed by my curiosity to uncover and face “the Others” within myself. Lines from the poet Yunus Emre floated in my mind: “Don’t say I am in myself; I am not at all. | There is an I within me, deep, deeper than I.” My self-questioning was iterative and ceaseless: “Which of my inner voices have I not heard, have I suppressed? Which is my actual voice, which are the voices of my others?” And so, my expedition to explore those who felt distant and foreign resulted in a fearless inner journey where I discovered how to listen to myself with curiosity.

During this process, I also started to question my understanding of the concept of freedom. Does freedom of expression – which is widely acknowledged as a universal human right – also imply that there is a “right to be heard?” If this “right to be heard” were defined, where would it fit within the concept of freedom? Would a person who is leveraging a right to express themselves freely actually achieve happiness or satisfaction if she/he did not feel heard? Even if we hold basic differences of opinion or come from opposing world views, is it possible for us to truly listen without judgement?

This is how I stumbled upon a new dimension of freedom which had motivated me throughout my life.

At the end of this process, this is where I have arrived: When a person is capable of acknowledging and accepting their own vulnerabilities, then they also learn how to become more forgiving and compassionate towards themselves. Over time, they are able to extend this same consideration to all those whom they might deem “the Other” and accept them as they are without judgment. In other words, the moment we connect with our own essence is the same moment in which we expand our heart’s ability to forge genuine connectedness with others without fear. My deepest epiphany has been that as unique as each person is, together with nature, we are all, ultimately, also one.

Today, I define the concept of freedom in a much broader way.

I think the pursuit of freedom is, in its essence, a struggle for rights and liberties. Human rights, women’s rights, minority rights, freedom of expression are all indispensable to the concept of freedom. However, the right to be heard – the need to be acknowledged – is an equally vital element of freedom. One cannot attain a sense of true freedom and happiness unless one is heard and acknowledged in earnest.

Yet as my journey unfolded, I became aware of a different dimension of freedom that is independent of but complementary to the struggle for rights and liberties. That dimension is the ability to listen generously to everyone especially those who hold views and have experiences alien to us.

My quest for a deeper understanding of freedom continues. But this I know today for certain: the walls we build around us as individuals and societies do not serve to protect us. Quite the contrary, they narrow our space for freedom and cruelly distract us from embracing our unity with each other and nature.

It will be impossible for us to overcome the tremendous challenges of today’s world without accepting that the destiny of humanity is intertwined. It is evident that no single country, leader or institution will be able to effectively tackle today’s global problems such as climate change, terrorism, and growing income inequalities by working solo. And now the Corona virus has taken this predicament to a whole new level by bringing our lives to a grinding halt.

Within this pandemic, not a single one of us can be labeled as “the Other”. We are all waves of the same ocean. In pursuit with the belief that we are all unique and one we embark on the journey of Vuslat Foundation with the vision of fostering authentic connectedness to oneself, to others and to nature through art, storytelling and social entrepreneurship.

The first and foremost important step in building authentic connectedness is generous listening. Hence, I invite everyone who wants to walk in this journey to join us in creating a transformative movement that places generous listening at the heart of our lives.