Amberin Zaman
Amberin Zaman is a Turkish journalist and a senior correspondent for Al-Monitor. Having started as a journalist in Turkey, Zaman contributes to various newspapers throughout the world. Her writing is centered on minority rights issues in Turkey. Life and career. Amberin Zaman is the daughter of Arshad-uz Zaman a former Bangladeshi Ambassador and member of parliament. Her mother is a Turk from Istanbul. She was born in New York City, New York and has studied in Switzerland. She returned from the United States where she became Turkey's correspondent for the "Los Angeles Times", "The Economist , The Daily Telegraph", and "The Washington Post" in 1992. After being sacked from "Habertürk", Zaman was employed with the liberal newspaper "Taraf." She also specialises in Kurdish issues and is currently a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington DC She additionally is a columnist for the independent online Turkish news portal Diken and for Al Monitor. Views and controversies. Amberin Zaman has been a supporter of minority rights in Turkey. She is a proponent of normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations and regularly discusses the Armenian genocide in her columns. In 2014, she participated  in a conference by the Hrant Dink Foundation that was dedicated to Armenian-Turkish reconciliation. Zaman, who recognizes the Armenian genocide as fact, believes that the Turkish government must reconcile with its history concerning the Armenians. In response to the Turkish government's letter of condolences to Armenians on 24 April 2014, Zaman declared: Zaman states that she is a target of a vilification campaign by pro-government media. In 2013, Amberin Zaman was sacked as a journalist for HaberTurk because of columns that were considered unacceptable by the government. Zaman was attacked on Twitter for reporting the Gezi Park  protests. She described the attacks as "abusive, violent and sexual". In 2014, the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, called Amberin Zaman "A militant in the guise of a journalist, a shameless woman... Know your place!" and "scum" at two successive election rallies. In a response to the accusations by the Prime Minister, Zaman wrote a column in the newspaper "Taraf" entitled "First be a human!" (Turkish: Önce insan ol!) A public apology campaign had started with numerous human rights groups and journalist associations throughout the world. Erdogan's rhetoric was condemned by a representative of the Organization for  Security and Cooperation, "The Economist", and the Turkish Journalists' Association. The Equality Monitoring Women's Group of Turkey collected 130 signatures demanding that Erdogan apologize for his language. Zaman "experienced a mass attack on Twitter" for her reporting on the "Charlie Hebdo" shooting in January 2015. Zaman stated: "It's like a public lynching. It has made me frightened for my physical safety when I am out in the streets." Personal life. She is married to Joseph Pennington, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq.