Turkey: No Country for Journalists
Semih Idiz writes that the Turkish government needs a sense of urgency to address the lack of press freedom.
The Paris-based media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders (RWB) characterizes Turkey scathingly in its latest roundup on the state of the international media as “the worlds biggest prison for journalists,” saying this is “a sad paradox for a country that portrays itself as a regional democratic model.”
It goes on to indicate that of the 72 mostly Kurdish media personnel currently detained, at least 42 are journalists and media assistants who are being held in connection with their media work. “The number of detained journalists is unprecedented since the end of military rule, but is not surprising given the Turkish judicial system’s structural problems,” it adds.
Military rule ostensibly ended in Turkey in 1983 following the 1980 coup d’état. The military’s ability to interfere and impose its will on the political domain, which could be felt until a few years ago, has also been ended by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government headed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
While this development has been widely hailed in the West, reports such as the one issued by RWB, including similar reports — for example by the American watchdog group Freedom House (FH) — show not only that the lot journalists has not improved, but also that press freedom has regressed in Turkey in recent years.
