"If somebody -- an organization, a professional organization -- intends to kill you, whatever you do they may do it. So, it is a normal part of my life. Just like a bad smell: you change your place a little bit and you don't smell that bad thing anymore." Sanar Yurdatapan is the spokesman for the Initiative for Freedom of Expression, an Istanbul-based civil rights group.

"Being a good Muslim means defending the rights of your enemy. And I'm trying to be a good Muslim. That hasn't stopped prosecutors calling for over 500 years of prison sentences for me." Abdurrahman Dilipak is a columnist for Vakit, Turkey's most conservative Islamist newspaper.

"I've been in prison 17 years since 1971.... My life is normal enough. Turkey is stuck. It can't give up on Europe, but it can't give up no these thought crimes either. What happens? It leaves everything hanging. [laughs] No solution, always the same problem." Ismail Besikci is Turkey's best know dissident, often imprisoned for writing about Turkey's Kurds.

You are in it with the others as well, so you are not alone in this....When you see that every one is getting threats, the meaning of threat kind of dilutes itself. And then you understand that the whole thing is not against you yourself personally, but you are a small part of a bigger...conflict that is going on in Turkey... [Y]ou cannot be cautious anymore, I mean, it's immoral to be cautious, in fact. Armenian Turkish Etyen Mahcupyan took over as editor of the weekly Agos when his friend Hrant Dink was murdered this January.

"He who fears the bird does not plant corn. If you're afraid, you should stop. But that's not the way an intellectual does. How can I look into the mirror in the morning if I stop? Therefore…you write and say whatever necessary, but you go less into the street and you hope that the state will give you a bodyguard." Professor Baskin Oran drew nationist ire when his government committee released a report urging Turkey to recognize ethnic diversity in Turkey.

"There was a letter put in my room at university threatening to kill me, to put a bullet on my neck. Now I have a bodyguard hanging around with me all the time. He is protecting me but I have to take care of him, you know. I have to feed him. Now I am thinking to buy some gifts for him and his family, because he is like a part of me." Professor Atilla Yayla (50) got into trouble in November of 2006 after he noted that visitors to Turkey are surprised at the ubiquity of images of Turkey's founder, Kemal Atatürk.