In the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900, Frank Baum wrote about a man who uses tricks to fool the residents of the fictional land of Oz into thinking he’s a wizard. For instance, it is believed that the Emerald City, the capital of Oz, is so bright and vibrant that visitors have to wear special glasses to protect their eyes. The glasses are one of the wizard’s tricks, since they make the city appear greener and grander.
He recalls an atmosphere of fear, with most people terrified of speaking out against the authoritarian government. “That fear sprang from the terrible defeat in the Spanish Civil War and from the many deaths that occurred during the war, but also from the harsh repression from the post-war period up to the end of the dictatorship,” he explains.Informants were everywhere, and the circle of trusted individuals was small. “As you can imagine, this is no way to live – this was living in darkness, silence, fear, and repression,” Vallejo says.
“There were few of us – very few – who dared to move from silence to activism, which involved many risks.”Vallejo was imprisoned in 1970 for attempting to set up a labour union among SEAT employees, spending half a year in jail, including 20 days being tortured by Barcelona’s secret police. After another arrest in late 1971 and the prosecution demanding 20 years for what were then considered crimes of association, organisation and propaganda, Vallejo crossed the border with France in January 1972. He ultimately gained political asylum in Italy, where he lived in exile before returning to Spain following the first limited amnesty of 1976, which granted pardons to political prisoners after Franco’s death in 1975.Today, Vallejo dedicates his time to human rights activism. He presides over the Catalan Association of Former Political Prisoners of Francoism, created in the final years of the dictatorship.
He learned about synthetic memories through Iridia, a human rights organisation that collaborated with DDS to help visualise memories of police abuse victims during the regime in a central Barcelona police station.Vallejo was drawn to the project, curious about how the technology might be applied to capturing resistance activities too dangerous to record during Franco’s rule.
In 1970, SEAT workers organised clandestine breakfasts in the woods of Vallvidrera. On Sunday mornings, disguised as hikers, they would make their way through the dense forests surrounding the Catalan capital to discuss the struggle against the dictatorship.
“I think I must have been to more than 10 or 15 of these forest gatherings,” Vallejo recalls. Other times, they met in churches. No records of these exist.This has been Turkiye’s position for many decades.
During the Holocaust, Turkish diplomats such as Necdet Kent and Selahattin Ulkumen risked their lives to rescue Jews from Nazi deportations. Decades later, during the genocide in Bosnia, Turkiye again urged the international community to act. Over the past 20 years, wherever human suffering emerged – from war zones to disaster areas – Turkiye has acted to shield the vulnerable and uphold the rights of the oppressed in the face of humanitarian crises.Turkiye responded to Israel’s indiscriminate attacks with decisive humanitarian and diplomatic action – despite considerable political and economic costs. It severed trade relations with Israel and led efforts at the United Nations to push for an international arms and trade embargo. Diplomatic ties have been cut, and Israeli officials are now banned from Turkish airspace, disrupting attempts to normalise genocide. While many governments hesitated or issued statements, Turkiye acted – delivering aid to children forced to drink contaminated water, to mothers seeking shelter among ruins, and to families mourning loved ones with no graves to bury them in.
at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Turkiye stood firmly for international law and justice – principles that many powerful nations invoke in theory but abandon when inconvenient. Western governments that once vowed “never again” now tiptoe around genocide, paralysed by fear of offending Israel, even as children die beneath collapsing ceilings. This is not mere indifference. It is a betrayal of historic proportions.A key enabler of Western silence and complicity in the genocide in Gaza has been Israel’s intense disinformation campaign. At the direction of President Erdogan, Turkiye’s Directorate of Communications has worked to cut through this noise. The Directorate’s Disinformation Combat Centre has, among other initiatives, launched the innovative The Lies of Israel platform, which counters false narratives in six languages. This was only the first step – clearing space for the truth to emerge and building pressure for meaningful change.