Turkey

Publisher Irfan Sanci (Sel Yayincilik/Publishing), recipient of the 2010 IPA Freedom Prize - Special Award, and the translator of Guillaume Apollinaire's Adventures of the Young Don Juan, have been acquitted in Istanbul. IPA, which observed the trial, welcomes their acquittal, hoping this will lead to other publishers' acquittals and a significant decrease in freedom to publish trials in Turkey...

Berivan Eker, former editor-in-chief of the Renge Heviya Jine women's magazine, was arrested on December 5, IPS Communication Foundation (BIANET) has reported. Her predecessors, Gurbet Cakar, Sultan Sonsuz, Ruken Aktas and Sibel Esmer are all either convicted or facing prison terms. Renge Heviya Jine (The Colour of Women's Hope) is the only women's magazine in Turkey published in both Kurdish and...

Turkey continues to abuse its anti-terrorism law to censor and punish journalists who raise the issue of its Kurdish minority or quote certain Kurdish leaders. Use of the law to prosecute journalists has increased since it was amended in 2006. Under article 7/2 of the law, propaganda on behalf of a terrorist organisation is punishable by imprisonment. As neither “propaganda” nor “terrorist...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has urged the Radio and TV Supreme Council (RTÜK) in Turkey to drop the prosecution it has brought against Kanal D, a privately-owned TV station critical of the government, for broadcasting the reactions of the families of ten soldiers who were killed in an ambush by members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The station...

During the 15th hearing Monday in the trial in Istanbul of newspaper editor Hrant Dink’s alleged killers, the court rejected the Dink family’s request for the murder to be reenacted in the presence of alleged hitman Ogün Samast at the spot where Dink was gunned down, outside the office of his Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos in the Istanbul district of Sisli. In a surprise development, the court...

Turkish reporter Ismail Saymaz faces 79 years in prison due to the publication of critical articles for the Turkish daily newspaper Radikal, IPI's National Committee in Turkey has reported. Saymaz, accused of "violating the secrecy of an investigation" in relation to the Ergenekon trials and events in the city of Erzincan, has previously been charged with no less than eight other criminal cases...

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the Turkish state failed in its duty to prevent newspaper editor Hrant Dink’s murder by acting on the information it had about plots against him, and violated his freedom of expression before his murder. The human rights court on September 14 ordered Turkey to pay his widow, Rakel Dink, and his children 100,000 euros in compensation and his brother...

Kurdish publications have again been suspended or seized under the Anti-Terrorism Law (Law 3713), which allows the Turkish courts to impose harsh penalties on journalists and media when they allude to Kurdish armed separatists and fosters a repressive climate for the Kurdish media. Although the European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly condemned Turkey because of the Anti-Terrorism Law, the...

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has convicted Turkey in the case of Hrant Dink. The Turkish-Armenian journalist was assassinated on January 19, 2007 in Istanbul. According to news obtained by IPS Communication Foundation (BIANET), the ECHR chamber decided that there had been a violation of the right to life because Turkey did not prevent the murder of the journalist and did not carry out...

The Turkish interior ministry has deported US journalist Jake Hess and ban him from re-entering the country. Arrested by anti-terrorist police in the mainly Kurdish southeastern province of Diyarbakir on August 11, Hess was deported on August 20 after being held for nine days. In its release in response to Hess' arrest, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) had demanded...