{"id":2350,"date":"2017-02-22T15:46:49","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T15:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2350"},"modified":"2017-02-23T15:52:08","modified_gmt":"2017-02-23T15:52:08","slug":"experts-voice-concern-as-turkeys-media-under-siege","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2350","title":{"rendered":"Experts voice concern as Turkey\u2019s media under siege"},"content":{"rendered":"

By FLORENCE PESCHKE, IPI Contributor
\nInternational Press Institute (IPI)<\/em><\/p>\n

The Turkish government\u2019s crackdown on independent media poses serious risks to democracy and stability, journalists from the country told a Vienna audience today at an International Press Institute (IPI) event examining media freedom in Turkey ahead of an April constitutional referendum that could vest even greater power in the hands of President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Journalists, NGO representatives and members of civil society hold a display of solidarity for colleagues imprisoned in Turkey following an event at the Presseclub Concordia in Vienna on Feb. 22, 2017.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At a panel discussion and solidarity event titled \u201cTurkey\u2019s Media Under Siege\u201d, celebrated media lawyer Fikret Ilkiz and acclaimed journalists Zeynep Erdim, Fehim I\u015fik and Mehve\u015f Evin discussed current threats and challenges to journalism and freedom of expression in Turkey, as well as the potential impact of international solidarity and pressure by NGOs, governments and the EU.<\/p>\n

IPI Executive Director Barbara Trionfi, who opened the event, cautioned that if the present repression of critical journalists \u2013 ranging from online harassment, to physical attacks and criminal prosecution \u2013 continues, only those who refuse to criticise the government will remain.<\/p>\n

Turkey is currently holding some 153 journalists and media workers behind bars, many of whom, their supporters argue, have been targeted for their journalism.<\/p>\n

Participants at today\u2019s discussion focused on the recent detention of Deniz Y\u00fccel, a correspondent for Germany\u2019s Die Welt, as a troubling new low. Y\u00fccel, a dual German and Turkish national, was detained in Turkey last week after he was questioned about his reporting on the controversial hacking of emails of Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, Erdo\u011fan\u2019s son-in-law. On Monday, Y\u00fccel\u2019s detention was extended under the current state of emergency, which Turkey declared following last year\u2019s July 15 coup attempt.<\/p>\n

Austrian author and journalist Petra Ramsauer, who moderated today\u2019s discussion at Vienna\u2019s Presseclub Concordia, said the crackdown on journalists should be viewed as a warning, as journalists are usually the first to be attacked when democracies come under threat.<\/p>\n

Turkey\u2019s crackdown on journalists continues as the country is set to hold an April referendum on constitutional changes that would turn the country into a presidential republic and extend Erdo\u011fan\u2019s power \u2013 a move that critics say would have a severe impact on the country\u2019s few remaining checks and balances.<\/p>\n

The panellists at today\u2019s event noted that the deterioration of press freedom and free expression in Turkey has been a continuing process in recent years, as IPI and others have documented.<\/p>\n

Ilkiz, former editor-in-chief of daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, pointed toward a 2011 report from then-Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg indicating that the problem was linked to the malfunctioning of the judiciary.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the current situation, the judicial body is not protecting but suppressing freedom of expression\u201d, Ilkiz argued. He accused the judiciary of having become \u201can arm of the executive body\u201d.<\/p>\n

He also cited IPI\u2019s 2015 special report \u201cDemocracy at Risk\u201c<\/a>, which concluded that Turkish authorities\u2019 failure to safeguard \u2013 and, in some cases, their steps to undermine \u2013 the right to share and receive information had led to serious deficiencies in the country\u2019s democracy.<\/p>\n

Ilkiz rejected Turkish government claims that those imprisoned, most on terrorism-related charges, were not charged due to their profession but because they had engaged in criminal acts.<\/p>\n

Participants noted that the criminal charges against government critics discouraged journalists from covering certain topics and pushed them into censoring themselves. They also pointed to the way in which abuse of economic conditions and threats against journalists complimented other efforts to strangle independent thought.<\/p>\n

Erdim, who has covered Turkey and regional developments for BBC World Turkey since 2004, said Y\u00fccel\u2019s arrest showed that the government was also willing to extend pressure against foreign media. She explained that it has been getting harder for foreign journalists to get press cards and accreditation, and that high officials frequently refer to foreign journalists as spies, making their position within the public sphere even more fragile.<\/p>\n

I\u015fik, a journalist for pro-Kurdish Evrensel and editor-in-chief of Germany-based Art\u0131 Ger\u00e7ek, emphasised the even-more-precarious situation that journalists for pro-Kurdish media outlets faced. The journalist was previously imprisoned for two years and fled to Germany last year when he again came under similar threat. He recounted not only the hardships that journalists targeted by the government face \u2013 he said he had lost seven colleagues over the course of his career \u2013 but the impact that has on their families.<\/p>\n

At the close of the discussion, journalists, NGO representatives and members of civil society held a display of solidarity for their imprisoned colleagues, posing for a group photo with signs calling on Turkey to \u201cFree Turkey Journalists\u201d and stating that \u201cJournalism Is Not a Crime\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By FLORENCE PESCHKE, IPI Contributor International Press Institute (IPI) The Turkish government\u2019s crackdown on independent media poses serious risks to democracy and stability, journalists from [more >>>]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2351,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","category-turkey-human-rights","category-turkey-minority-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2352,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2350\/revisions\/2352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}