Turkey

Reporters Without Borders has condemned media worker Kadri Bagdu’s murder Tuesday while distributing the Kurdish dailies Azadiya Welat and Özgür Gündem in Seyhan, in the southeastern province of Adana. His targeted killing harks back to the darkest hours of Turkey’s recent history. Bagdu, 46, was distributing the newspapers free of charge on the street in the Sakir Pasa district of Seyhan...

Reporters Without Borders has expressed relief at learning that three German journalists arrested in Diyarbakir on Saturday have been released pending further investigation. The organisation called on the Turkish judiciary to immediately drop all charges against the journalists and allow them to continue their work without restrictions. “Journalists must not be criminalised for reporting on...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) have joined international calls for the 20 Syrian-Kurdish journalists and media workers detained by Turkish military forces to be released with immediate effect. The journalists were forced to leave the city of Kobani, northern Syria, after fighting intensified between Kurdish forces protecting the...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) have condemned a violent tear gas attack on a BBC team by Turkish police on Sunday. According to media reports, the BBC team was filming protests by local and Syrian Kurds on the Turkish-Syrian border, near Kobane. As the team were leaving the protests Turkish police fired two canisters towards them...

Turkey risks a serious backslide in democracy unless a recent trend of erosion of media freedom is reversed, the International Press Institute (IPI) warned Tuesday last at the close of a joint press freedom mission to the country with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The warning followed a four-day mission in which an international IPI/CPJ delegation met with journalists, academics...

In the wake of intense global pressure, the Turkish government has released several of its imprisoned journalists in recent weeks. Among those freed is Füsun Erdoğan, arrested in 2006 and condemned to a life sentence + 300 years. Erdoğan was featured in WAN-IFRA’s “30 Days for Freedom” campaign, and her son spoke to WAN-IFRA’s Alexandra Waldhorn after his mother’s release. According...

The Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed alarm at today's reports that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan in Parliament called CNN journalist Ivan Watson a "flunky" and said the foreign press was "literally executing their duties as agents" in connection with the coverage of protests in Istanbul. The move follows the brief detention and manhandling by police of Watson and...

The International Press Institute (IPI) Friday expressed concern over recent developments in Turkey in which journalists were targeted with excessive prison sentences and the prime minister urged grieving families to sue his media critics. Turkish media reported last week that prosecutors were seeking 26-52 years behind bars for daily Taraf journalist Mehmet Baransu and Managing Editor Murat Sevki...

Turkish authorities risk inciting violence against journalists unless they stop verbally attacking those covering last week’s deadly mining disaster in the western town of Soma and call on their supporters to do the same, the International Press Institute (IPI) said Thursday. Hasnain Kazim, an Istanbul-based correspondent for Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine, told Agence France-Presse (AFP)...

Sentenced to life in prison plus an additional 300 years, Füsun Erdoğan went from a hard-working radio journalist in Istanbul to being confined to a prison cell. For two years after her arrest by plainclothes police in September 2006, Erdogan, who holds Dutch and Turkish citizenship, didn't even know her crime. Overall, her trial lasted more than eight years. After months of pressure from civil...