Posts Tagged ‘Kurdish’
February 28th, 2011
Two Kurdish journalists have been
sentenced to ten months of imprisonment each, after attending a demonstration in 2008. Vedat Yilidiz, Dicle News Agency, and Lokman Dayan, Güneydoğu Ekspres, have been
convicted of “spreading propaganda for an illegal organisation”. They were among 25 defendants charged with “membership of an illegal organisation”. Both journalists attended the protests in their professional capacities, they said. The demonstration, at which the journalists were
beaten by police, concerned the alleged violence against Abdullah Öcalan, the detained leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
December 13th, 2010
Berivan Eker, former editor of the women’s magazine Renge Heviya Jine, has been arrested on charges of “spreading propaganda for an illegal organisation”. She faces
21 years in prison. Eker referred to PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan as the “leader of the Kurdish people” and praised alleged PKK members. Several of the magazine’s senior editors — Sultan Sonsuz, Ruken Aktaş and
Gurbet Çakar — face similar charges. Renge Heviya Jine (The Colour of Women’s Hope) is the only magazine in Turkey published in both Turkish and Kurdish.
June 10th, 2010
Three members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party were sentenced to six months each for speaking Kurdish in an election campaign. Although the election campaigners claimed to have welcomed the meeting in Kurdish, they were sentenced for”committing a criminal offence by violating the laws related to oral and written election propaganda to be made in Turkish only”. The sentences come only days after journalist Irfan Atkan was jailed for 15 months, and his editor fined for publishing an article quoting a member of the Kurdistan Workers Party.
March 17th, 2010
Editor-in-chief of the Firat newspaper
Hacı Boğatekin has been sentenced to five years in jail. Bogatekin was charged with “insult” and “defamation” and “attempting to influence a fair trial”. Three other journalists were
charged with similar offences. In one of the offending articles Bogatekin argued that the real threat did not come from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party but from religious leader Fethullah Gülen’s congregation. He also published prosecutor Sadullah Ovacıklı’s criticism of his abbreviation of Gülen’s name to “Feto” and made allegations about the prosecutors relationship with Güle. Boğatekin was awarded the Press Freedom Award in 2008 and was awarded by the Contemporary Journalists’ Association (ÇGD) in 2009.
March 8th, 2010
Vedat Kursun, former editor of Azadiya Welat, has been charged with 105 counts of “helping and abetting [the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party] by spreading propaganda” and “glorifying crimes and criminals”. His newspaper published numerous articles regarding statements and activities of the organisation, which his lawyer cites as published under the scope of freedom of expression and right to inform. His successor,
Ozan Kilinç, was convicted and sentenced to
21 years imprisonment on similar charges in February.
November 23rd, 2009
A government directive published on 13 November lifted all remaining restrictions on the media’s use of minority languages. The use of Kurdish had been allowed in public printed media and one public TV station, TRT6. However, privately-owned radio and TV stations were limited to 5 hours maximum of Kurdish language broadcast per week. Moreover, all Kurdish TV broadcasting was required to provide Turkish subtitles, making live broadcasting impossible. Read more
here
October 1st, 2009
Kerim Yildiz discusses how Turkey’s easing of restrictions on the use of Kurdish remains far from complete
(more…)
