Turkey: The Powerful And The Paranoid

http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/turkey-the-powerful-and-the-paranoid/152/

Photo by ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images

By Jess Hill

POLITICS   |   March 27, 2012

Respond to Feature

Turkey: The Powerful And The Paranoid

Turkey is powerful, prosperous and stable. So why is it locking up so many of its intellectuals?

“ We know that terrorist cells might include a university chair, an association or a NGO.”

Jailed journalists a sign of declining press freedom in Turkey

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-turkey-media-20120219,0,4791137.story

By J. Michael Kennedy, Los Angeles Times; February 19, 2012 / Reporting from Istanbul, Turkey

Turkey is often held up in the U.S. and Europe as a model of how democracy can work in a Muslim country. But activists say press freedom continues to erode.

One ofTurkey’sbest known publishers and human rights activists is sitting in prison — again — waiting for a court case that appears to be at a virtual standstill. He is far from alone.

Ragip Zarakolu was arrested in October along with dozens of other people suspected of having links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, also known as the PKK.

Report: Journalists detained in Turkey

AP foreign, Tuesday December 20 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/10004577?fb=native

SUZAN FRASER

Associated Press= ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish police on Tuesday detained some 40 people, including journalists, as part of a growing investigation into a Kurdish group that prosecutors accuse of links to Kurdish rebels, the country’s state-run television said.

The private Dogan news agency said Mustafa Ozer, a photographer working for the French news agency, Agence France Presse, and journalists for Kurdish media organizations were among the detained. Photographs obtained by The Associated Press show Ozer smiling as he is being led by a plain-clothed police officer into a van.

Turkey Arrests Journalists It Ties to Outlawed Group

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204058404577110491968093640.html

21.12.2011, By AYLA ALBAYRAK

ISTANBUL—Twenty-six journalists were among the suspects arrested on Tuesday in a crackdown on an organization tied to Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a media watchdog said, heightening criticism of the country’s record on press freedom.

If the number is confirmed, the arrests would bring the number of journalists in Turkish jails to more than 90, one of the highest detention numbers for journalists in the world, the Bianet media-rights monitoring group said.

The journalists, most of them working for Kurdish newspapers and agencies, were arrested on Tuesday as part of an operation against the Kurdistan Communities Union, or KCK, an umbrella organization for Kurdish nationalist groups that the government says acts as the urban wing of the PKK.

Turkish journalists go on trial over alleged plot

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/22/turkey-trial-idUSL5E7MM1P920111122

Tue Nov 22, 2011 12:11pm EST

* Indictment accuses defendants of terror group membership

* Media freedom concerns raised over case

* One of 14 defendants died in custody this month

By Ece Toksabay

ISTANBUL, Nov 22 (Reuters) – Prominent Turkish journalists went on trial accused of links to a shadowy group seeking to topple the government, in a case that has fuelled Western concern over media freedom in Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey.

Gathered outside the courthouse on Tuesday, supporters of journalists Nedim Sener and Ahmet Sik bore a large banner with the message: “There can be no free society without free journalism.”

Turkey must overhaul media freedom laws – envoy

By Ibon Villelabeitia

ANKARA | Tue Nov 15, 2011 8:55am EST, Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/15/turkey-media-idUSL5E7MF2IB20111115

Nov 15 (Reuters) – European Union candidateTurkey needs to change its attitude to media freedom and laws under which more than 50 Turkish journalists languish in Turkish jails, the head of the Council of Europe human rights body said on Tuesday.

“We clearly have a situation that needs to be solved so that Turkey moves forward,” secretary general Thorbjorn Jagland told a group of foreign journalists in Ankara during a visit.

Jailed Author’s Banned Book Launched

By Ayla Albayrak, Wall Stree Journal, 16.11.2011v

[cited from http://blogs.wsj.com/emergingeurope/2011/11/16/jailed-author%E2%80%99s-banned-book-launched/ ]

The book was banned and the author jailed before it was published, but on Wednesday a group of fellow journalists and writers in Turkey launched Ahmet Sik’s “The Army of Imam” at an annual book fair, outraged by what they see as suppression of free speech.

Associated Press

Investigative reporter Ahmet Sik.

Mr. Sik has been in jail since March and it wasn’t until September that the charges against him — aiding an alleged terrorist organization known as Ergenekon, that aimed to overthrow the government — were made public. His trial is expected to begin later this month. The book is being used in evidence against him.