Turkey

The last restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language by the Turkish news media have been lifted, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The government gazette published a directive on November 13 indefinitely lifting all remaining restrictions on the broadcast media’s use of minority languages. Use of Kurdish had been allowed in the print media and the national public TV station TRT 6...

Essential issues were again left unaddressed at the 11th hearing on October 12 in the trial of the newspaper editor Hrant Dink’s alleged killers before an Istanbul court. A Turkish journalist of Armenian origin, Dink was gunned down outside his newspaper in Istanbul on January 19, 2007. “In hearing after hearing, the same fundamental questions remain, including the existence of a political will at...

Journalist Aylin Duruoglu has spent nearly six months in Istanbul’s Bakirköy prison on unfounded charges of belonging to a terrorist organisation. The Istanbul prosecutor’s office requested a 15-year jail sentence for Duruoglu when she appeared in court on October 1, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Duruoglu was accused of belonging to an armed group called the Revolutionary...

Turkish investigators have secretly listened into telephone calls to and from popular daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, the Turkish Justice Ministry has confirmed, according to Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News newspaper. The wiretapping took place without the necessary approval of the Turkish courts. Investigators undertook the controversial eavesdropping as part of an ongoing police probe — known as the...

Turkey’s tax ministry has imposed an unprecedented TL 3.75 billion, or €1.74 billion fine on a media group, Dogan Yayin, a conglomerate of newspapers and television stations that has been extremely critical of the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The huge penalty, handed down earlier this week following examinations of tax reports from 2005, 2006 and 2007, follows a €345 million fine against...

An Istanbul criminal court has ordered the closure, for one month, of Günlük newspaper – which is known for raising issues related to Turkey’s Kurdish minority - over an article considered by the court to constitute propaganda for a terrorist organisation. The article was published earlier this month. The verdict, handed down on August 22, did not specify why the article was deemed to be of a...

Two physical attacks on journalists in the past month and two ongoing trials have again highlighted the aversion that local authorities in Turkey display towards reporters who try to cover local government corruption. “Local officials in Turkey do not hesitate to beat up journalists who criticise them,” Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) said in a statement. “These frequent beatings are unacceptable...

After reporting 10 claims of women being raped since a new police chief came to the Turkish town of Diyarbakır, an issue of the Azadiya Welat newspaper was confiscated, IPS Communication Foundation (BIANET) has reported. The Diyarbakır 1st Criminal Court of Peace confiscated the July 8, 2009 issue of Azadiya Welat because it reported the claims of a 23-year-old woman who said she had been raped by...

An Istanbul court has convicted the daily newspaper Günlük of "spreading PKK propaganda" in two issues of the paper, the IPS Communication Foundation (BIANET) has reported. According to journalist Ragip Zarakolu, Kurdish media is targeted frequently. Judge Necat Ede of Istanbul's 12th Heavy Penal Court cited Article 6 of the Anti-Terrorism Law, an article which former President Ahmet Necdet Sezer...

Nedim Sener, a reporter for the daily Milliyet, who has written a book about the murder of journalist Hrant Dink, faces up to 28 years in prison after police officers filed complaints against him, the IPS Communication Foundation (BIANET) has reported. Sener's book is titled The Dink Murder and Intelligence Lies. The book deals with the gendarmerie, police and national intelligence officers who...