Today’s Zaman
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has stopped sending Foreign Ministry statements and phone text messages to a number of media outlets known to be critical of the government, including the Today’s Zaman and Zaman dailies as well as the private Cihan news agency.
The ministry excluded all the journalists affiliated with these media outlets from the statement distribution list as of Nov. 3.
An email inquiry sent to the ministry’s information desk by a Today’s Zaman correspondent last week asking whether the ministry has deliberately excluded certain correspondents from the information list remains unanswered.
An official from the ministry who asked not to be named could not give an answer when asked whether the ministry is applying a media ban on Today’s Zaman or not. Asked if the Today’s Zaman correspondents will be turned away if they come to attend an event at the Foreign Ministry, the official said he does not know and that it is not up to him to determine that.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tanju Bilgiç has not been answering phone calls from Today’s Zaman for months.
Bilgiç, who took office in January 2014, has held only one “press conference,” on Nov. 4, but neglected to invite a number of media outlet representatives, including from Today’s Zaman.
Correspondents from Zaman and Cihan were stopped in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building by ministry personnel. When a Zaman correspondent asked the personnel who it was that had ordered them to stop the journalists, they replied they were following the orders of their superiors and the state.
Withholding press accreditation to bar journalists from attending events appears to have become common practice in Turkey. Several media outlets were not granted permission to cover President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s inauguration ceremony on Aug. 28, for example. The Prime Ministry and Ministry of Foreign Affairs are the most recent government institutions to have imposed an accreditation ban on certain media outlets that are not pro-government.
A journalist from Cihan was asked on Monday to leave the hall where Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s wife, Sare Davutoğlu, was delivering a speech about women victimized by war.
A group of private security guards approached Cihan’s İlhan Çulha, took his microphone and asked him to leave the hall, reportedly to prevent him from asking questions.
Journalists from the Zaman Media Group, the İpek Media Group and Samanyolu were barred from entering the Prime Ministry building to attend a press briefing of Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç after a Cabinet meeting on Nov. 3.
Previously, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) imposed a media accreditation ban on a number of outlets, including the Aydınlık, Birgün, Evrensel, Sözcü, Taraf, Yeni Asya and Yurt dailies, as well as broadcasters Halk TV, Hayat TV and Ulusal Kanal, preventing them from covering a ceremony on July 1 announcing then-Prime Minister Erdoğan’s candidacy for the seat of president.
Several journalist associations in Turkey, including the Diplomacy Correspondents Association (DMD), the Parliamentary Correspondents Association and the Economy Correspondents Association, and journalist unions issued a statement on Wednesday calling the government to end the bans.