Report find Turkey arrests more journalists than Iran, China
Special to WorldTribune.com
WASHINGTON — Turkey has been deemed one of the most abusive states
toward the media.
A leading Western media rights group said the government of Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has detained more journalists than such human
rights violators as China and Iran. The New York-based Committee to Protect
Journalists asserted that this marked one of the worst state crackdowns on
the media in years.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan. /AFP
“The government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has waged one of the world’s biggest crackdowns on press freedom in recent history,” the committee said. “Today Turkey’s imprisonments surpass the next most repressive nations, including Iran, Eritrea, and China.”
In a report released on Oct. 22, Turkey, a leading member of NATO and long a candidate for the European Union, was cited for detaining hundreds of journalists. Most of them were said to have written about Turkey’s war with Kurdish separatists.
“The CPJ has found highly repressive laws, a criminal procedure code
that greatly favors the state and a harsh anti-press tone set at the highest levels of government,” the 50-page report said.
Erdogan, deemed the leading foreign ally of U.S. President Barack Obama,
has long been criticized for Turkey’s crackdown on the media as well as on
secular opponents. The European Union has urged Ankara to respect the rights
of journalists and as well as critics of the government.
“Turkey’s close relationship with the United States — built in part on
Ankara’s image as a regional model for democracy — is also at risk,” the
report said.
The report said many of Turkey’s journalists were accused of being
members of the Kurdish Workers Party, deemed a terrorist organization. More
than 75 percent of the detainees, almost all of them Kurds, have not been
convicted of any crime.
“The government conflated reporting favorable to the PKK or other
outlawed Kurdish groups with actual assistance to such organizations,” the
report, titled “Turkey’s Press Freedom Crisis,” said. “Basic newsgathering
activities — receiving tips, assigning stories, conducting interviews,
relaying information to colleagues — were depicted by prosecutors as
engaging in a terrorist enterprise.”
The committee said Erdogan has led the campaign against Turkey’s media.
The report cited the prime minister’s personal defamation suits against
journalists and news outlets as well as pressure to fire critics. In 2009,
Turkey’s largest media group, Dogan Yayin, was fined several billion of
dollars for alleged tax improprieties.
The Erdogan government has pledged to ease restrictions on Turkey’s
media. In a letter to CPJ, Turkey’s ambassador to the United States, Namik
Tan, said censorship would also be reduced.
“We firmly believe that guaranteeing fundamental freedoms is vital for
our democracy,” Tan said. “This is even more important now as Turkey is
setting a significant example for many other countries in our region,
especially those undergoing major popular upheaval and transformation.”
