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.”

FOUR JOURNALISTS RELEASED BUT FIGHT GOES ON FOR DOZENS STILL HELD

PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY 13 MARCH 2012. UPDATED ON WEDNESDAY 14 MARCH 2012.

http://en.rsf.org/turquie-four-journalists-released-but-13-03-2012,42106.html

Reporters Without Borders warmly welcomes the release on bail of the investigative journalists Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener and the OdaTV news website columnists Muhammet Sait Cakir and Coskun Musluk. However, their release should not hide the fact that dozens more media workers are still held.

“Naturally, our thoughts are with those journalists and their friends and families, who can finally see an end to their absurd nightmare after more than a year,” the press freedom organization said.

‘Treason’ in Turkey

Prosecutors wage war on suspected coup conspirators—but at what cost to the country?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/02/19/democracy-is-the-victim-in-turkey-s-war-on-coup-conspirators.html

by Owen Matthews  | February 20, 2012 12:00 AM EST

Turkey’s reform-minded Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is nothing like his iron-fisted Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin—right? Think again. In both leaders’ countries, journalists who dare to criticize the government often end up behind bars. In Erdogan’s Turkey, as in Putin’s Russia, the ruling clique’s political adversaries have been hounded by courts and police and have spent months or years in jail without trial, while oppositionist businessmen have been slapped with ruinous tax bills. On at least two dismal indices, Turkey ranks even worse than Russia: Reporters Without Borders’ latest Press Freedom Index puts Turkey in 148th place, behind Russia at 142, and the European Court of Human Rights found Turkey guilty of 174 violations last year, while runner-up Russia had 133.

A Brawl Over Turkish Press Freedom

http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/a-brawl-over-turkish-oppression-of-the-press/

Susanne Fowler, February 4, 2012

PARIS — A war of words between an American novelist and the prime minister of Turkey over press freedom is playing out in a befittingly public venue: in newspapers and on Web sites.

Lucas Dolega/European Pressphoto AgencyAuthor Paul Auster

Paul Auster, author of “The New York Trilogy” and other works, told Rendezvous by telephone from his studio in Brooklyn on Friday that he had told a Turkish journalist that he would not visit Turkey, nor China for that matter, as a way to protest the jailing of scores of journalists and writers there.

RSF: Turkey Loses Ground again in World Press Freedom Index

 http://bianet.org/english/world/135713-turkey-loses-ground-again-in-world-press-freedom-index

Turkey fell back ten places to number 148 in the 2011-2012 World Press Freedom Index. According to the report of Reporters Without Borders, press freedom is in an even worse state in only 31 countries.

Paris – BİA News Center

26 January 2012, Thursday

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) announced the 2011-2012 World Press Freedom Index on 25 January.

While Turkey was on 138^th position out of a total of 179 surveyed countries last year, the country fell back a further ten places to rank no. 148 this year.

The RSF report claims that Turkey is “back to old habits”.

Turkey: Court Acquits Journalist Who Interviewed Kurdish Separatist

http://www.eurasiareview.com/29122011-turkey-court-acquits-journalist-who-interviewed-kurdish-separatist/

Reporters Without Borders

December 29, 2011

Reporters Without Borders said Thursday it hailed journalist Ertugrul Mavioglu’s acquittal by an Istanbul court earlier today on a charge of “propaganda in support of a terrorist organization” for interviewing Murat Karayilan of the Union of Kurdistan Communities (KCK), which the authorities regard as the urban wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Freedom of expression, freedom of press

 

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/freedom-of-expression-freedom-of-press.aspx?pageID=449&nID=9755&NewsCatID=409

22.12.2011, Murat Yetkin, Hurriyet Daily News

Reacting to French Parliament’s initiative to ban saying that the 1915 killings of Armenians was not genocide, Turkish Foreign Minister said yesterday in his Libération piece that the French take was a violation of freedom of expression.

The French take is beset on a 2008 European Union framework decision. There are certain well defined caveats on freedom of expression when it comes to human life. For example, it is forbidden in Germany to praise the Holocaust in Germany and Europe under occupation during World War II and claim that it was not genocide against Jewish people; nearly 6 million Jews were systematically killed by the Nazis just because of being who they are, as ruled by the Nuremberg Trials after the war.

I am not going to get into the debate whether the 1915 massacres, for which I feel deeply sorrow and regret, are of the same kind as the Holocaust.

But I can debate that the poisonous competition in the French political atmosphere now puts all unlike matters in the same basket.

Therefore, Davutoğlu has a point when he approaches the issue on the basis of freedom of expression.

Freedom of expression and its twin sister freedom of press are under questioning in today’s Turkey too.

Rights groups condemn arrests of Turkish journalists

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/21/us-turkey-journalists-idUSTRE7BK1DS20111221

By Jonathon Burch

ISTANBUL | Wed Dec 21, 2011 11:46am EST

(Reuters) – Press freedom groups condemned the arrests of dozens of journalists across Turkey this week, which rights groups say could make it one of the countries with the most reporters in jail.

France-based Reporters Without Borders said on Tuesday it was “astonished” at the scale and manner of the detentions, which have “no place in a democratic state”, and urged Turkish authorities to explain in detail the reasons for the arrests.

The latest arrests could push the number of reporters in Turkish jails above 100, among the highest in the world, and will fuel accusations Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government is intolerant of dissent and is trying to tame the media.

Turkey’s War on Journalists

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/22/turkeys_war_on_journalists?page=full

As Prime Minister Erdogan’s government grows increasingly intolerant of dissent, the media is bearing the brunt of its effort to silence its critics.

BY ALIA MALEK | DECEMBER 22, 2011

ISTANBUL —When the terrorism trial of jailed Turkish journalists Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener began in Istanbul on Nov. 22, only a handful of their colleagues — far fewer than expected — gathered in protest outside the courthouse that will decide their fate.

A mosaic of the smiling photographs of many of Turkey’s detained journalists was laid out on the ground at the foot of a swarm of TV tripods, their cameras aiming for a glimpse of the defendants. Sik and Sener’s case is perhaps the most high-profile example of what critics see as the Turkish government’s crackdown on critical voices, which has transformed it into one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists.

Turkey arrests journalists in alleged terror plot

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/20/world/meast/turkey-journalists-arrested/index.html

By Ivan Watson and Yesim Comert, CNN

December 20, 2011 — Updated 2317 GMT (0717 HKT)

Journalists and human rights activists gather in Istanbul on Tuesday to protest the detention of dozens of journalists.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Police raids target journalists; dozens of people detained
• “We consider this a witch hunt and a threat to anyone who is in opposition,” says newspaper executive
• Observer says this is an ongoing clampdown “against people who are not terrorists”
• Journalists say press freedom is under attack in Turkey

Istanbul (CNN) — Turkish police detained dozens of people in a wave of raids targeting suspected members of the “press and propaganda wing” of a banned Kurdish separatist group accused of committing acts of terrorism, the semi-official Anatolian Agency reported Tuesday.

Home thoughts from abroad

Even as Turkey preaches human rights to neighbours, its record at home is patchy

WITH her intense gaze, washed-out jeans and talk of freedom, Dilsat Aktas is a typical left-wing activist. In May the 29-year-old climbed onto an armoured police-carrier in Ankara to protest against the death of another activist, who had suffered a stroke after being sprayed with pepper gas in the Black Sea province of Hopa. Ms Aktas now hobbles around on crutches: the police clubbed her so hard as she tried to escape that they broke her left hip. “The doctor says it will take three years to fix,” she says, dragging on a cigarette.

Journalists on Coup Trial in Turkey

 

NOVEMBER 23, 2011

http://blogs.wsj.com/emergingeurope/2011/11/23/journalists-on-coup-trial-in-turkey/?KEYWORDS=ayla+albayrak

By Ayla Albayrak

AFP/Getty Images

Journalists and human right activists protest in front of the courthouse in Istanbul during the trial of two prominent Turkish journalists on Tuesday.

ISTANBUL — Thirteen people went on trial Tuesday accused of involvement in a plan to topple Turkey’s AK-Party government, including two investigative journalists whose arrest and near-nine month detention has become a rallying point for critics of the government’s record on media freedom.

Turkish and international human rights groups say the cases of Nedim Sener and Ahmet Sik highlight the poor state of press freedom in Turkey, and see their long detentions as punishment for journalistic work.

Turkish trial of journalists raises human rights concerns

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1122/Turkish-trial-of-journalists-raises-human-rights-concerns

Turkish journalists Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener appeared in court today in a trial that has some questioning the health of Turkey’s democracy, long considered a model in the Muslim world.

By Alexander Christie-Miller, Correspondent / November 22, 2011

ISTANBUL

Several Turkish journalists appeared in court today for the start of a trial that has sparked fears of growing authoritarianism in the Muslim-majority democracy.

Two investigative reporters who had been writing about judicial and police corruption are among those implicated in the alleged conspiracy to overthrow the country’s Islamic-rooted government.

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has frequently been praised by the United States andEuropean Union for enacting judicial reforms and wresting power from the country’s once-dominant military. However in the past four years, hundreds of people have been arrested in connection with a series of sprawling terror investigations that critics claim are a tool for stifling dissent.