Turkey

Jake Hess, an American freelance journalist who writes for Inter Press Service (IPS), was arrested on August 11 in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, in southeastern Turkey, and is currently being held at the headquarters of the city’s anti-terrorist unit. Accused of links with the Union of Kurdistan Communities (KSK), a new organisation that is alleged to be an offshoot of the outlawed...

The department of public prosecution has brought new charges against Kurdish writer Mehmet Güler and publisher Ragip Zarakolu. This time they are to be prosecuted for a book about the political system that the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) would like to introduce, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. In a trial due to begin on September 30 before...

A former Kurdish editor who has been held since January 30, 2009 and sentenced to a total of 166 years in prison with 30-odd cases, has been awarded a Journalists Association of Turkey press freedom prize. on 24 July. Vedat Kursun is former editor of Kurdish-language daily Azadiya Welat. Receiving the award on Kursun's behalf on July 24, his father said, “To Turkish and international public...

Referans newspaper writer Cengiz Çandar is facing a prison sentence of between one and three years in Turkey over an allegation of "insulting a public servant in the commission of his duty". The charges are based on Çandar's criticism of the fact that a secret witness in the Hrant Dink murder case was not brought to the court in an February 8, 2010 hearing, according to IPS Communication...

A controversial article by writer Yilmaz Ozdil was within the "limits of press freedom", the Diyarbakir Public Prosecution in Turkey has decided. In the April 14 article, which was published in Hürriyet newspaper, Ozdil had defended a physical attack on Kurdish politician Ahmet Türk. The Press Council had previously reached a similar conclusion regarding Ozdil's column, IPS Communication...

Three Kurdish journalists were attacked while they were covering demonstrations by members of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) in Istanbul and in Midyat, in the southeastern province of Mardin, on July 18, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The protests were prompted by reports that the bodies of several members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the Kurdish armed...

The 14th hearing in the trial of the men accused of the January 2007 murder of Hrant Dink, a journalist of Armenian origin, has been completed. During the latest hearing, held on July 12, the Dink family’s lawyers filed a request for the prosecution of several senior officials and leading nationalists, including: Ergun Güngör, former deputy governor of Istanbul Özer Yilmaz, former deputy chief of...

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has convicted Turkey of illegally restricting the freedom of expression of two journalists, according to delayed reports. The ruling was based on the Turkish government's decision in two separate trials against Aylin Guzel, the owner and editor-in-chief of Maya magazine, and Aziz Ozer, editor-in-chief of Yeni Dünya için Çağrı magazine. On July 6, the ECHR...

Istanbul’s Yargıtay High Court handed down on Friday a 15-month prison sentence to Turkish journalist Irfan Aktan, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Aktan was found guilty of “producing terrorist propaganda” in an article published in an issue of the biweekly Express in October 2009. The article described scepticism among Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) members toward a...

Important testimony was given at the 13th hearing in the trial of Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor Hrant Dink’s alleged killers in Istanbul on May 10, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). A witness, whose identity was not revealed, identified three of the defendants as being at the scene of Dink’s fatal shooting outside his newspaper on January 19, 2007. Testifying that the main suspect...