16 Jun 2017 | Press Releases, Turkey, Turkey Statements
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]19 Haziran’da aralarında gazetecilerin de olduğu 17 sanığın yargılandığı davanın ilk duruşması görülecek. Sanıklar arasında önde gelen yazar ve siyasi yorumculardan Ahmet Altan, Mehmet Altan ve Nazlı Ilıcak da var. Dava, geçen yıl gerçekleşen başarısız darbe girişimine katılmış olmakla suçlanan gazetecilerin yargılandığı davalardan ilki ve mahkemelerin Olağanüstü Hal ortamında ifade özgürlüğü ve adil yargılanma hakkı ile ilgili sayısız davaya nasıl yaklaşacaklarına ışık tutabilir.
Sanıklarla ve Türkiye’deki basın özgürlüğüyle dayanışmayı göstermek için, ARTICLE 19, Uluslararası Af Örgütü, Index on Censorship, Norveç PEN ve Uluslararası PEN temsilcileri duruşmaya gözlemci olarak katılıyor olacak. İngiltere ve Galler Barosu İnsan Hakları Komitesi ve Uluslararası Kıdemli Avukatlar Projesi de duruşmaya gözlemci gönderecekler.
Sanıklara yönelik suçlamalar, Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan ve Türk hükümetinin “suçtan zarar görenler” olarak nitelendirildiği 247 sayfalık iddianamede yer alıyor. Sanıklar Ahmet Altan, Mehmet Altan ve Nazlı Ilıcak “Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisini ortadan kaldırmaya teşebbüs”, “Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Hükümetini ortadan kaldırmaya teşebbüs”, “Anayasal düzeni ortadan kaldırmaya teşebbüs” ve “Silahlı bir terör örgütüne üye olmamakla birlikte örgüt adına suç işlemek” suçlamalarıyla yargılanıyor. Geri kalan sanıklar ayrıca, Türk hükümetinin darbe girişimini düzenlediğini iddia ettiği Gülen hareketine atıfla “terör örgütü üyeliği” ile suçlanıyor.
Davalıların çoğunluğu ya ülke dışında sürgünde ya da neredeyse 10 aydır tutuklu olarak yargılanıyor. Avrupa İnsan Hakları Mahkemesi 14 Haziran’da, Altanlar ve Nazlı Ilıcak’ın da aralarında bulunduğu tutuklu yedi gazetecinin haklarının uzun süreli tutuklulukları nedeniyle ihlal edilip edilmediğini belirlemek amacıyla bir dizi sorunun yanıtını talep eden bir dilekçeyi Türkiye yetkililerine iletti.
Bu davanın siyasi amaçlı olduğuna inanıyoruz ve yetkilileri, uluslararası yasalar altında açık bir şekilde suç teşkil eden fiillerin kanıtını sunmadıkları takdirde tüm suçlamaları düşürmeye ve tutuklu sanıkları derhal ve koşulsuz olarak serbest bırakmaya çağırıyoruz.
ARTICLE 19, savunma avukatlarının talebi üzerine Altan kardeşlere yönelik suçlamaları inceleyen bir uzman görüşü hazırladı ve bunu da duruşmada mahkemeye sunacak. Görüş, Altanlara atfedilen suçlamaların, ifade özgürlüğü hakkının yasal olmayan bir şekilde kısıtlanması anlamına geldiğini savunuyor.
Türkiye’de ifade özgürlüğü hakkında daha ayrıntılı bilgi için, lütfen Mayıs 2017’de BM İnsan Hakları Konseyi’ne sunulan ortak bildiriye bakınız.
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12 May 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, Turkey
Young people in Turkey have a lot to feel enraged about, from worsening living conditions to the government’s rampant corruption. Since 2015, I have felt my own fair share of rage.
That was the year my father, Can Dündar, a journalist and former editor-in-chief of the opposition daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, was imprisoned on trumped up terror charges.
Pro-government press outlets told lies about him and our family, and prosecutors sought multiple life sentences for his “crime” of reporting on covert arms shipments to Syria. Although he was released nearly 100 days later thanks to public solidarity and a Supreme Court decision, my family was eventually forced into exile, with my parents now living in Germany and myself in the UK.
My father likens Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s tactics to those of Vladimir Putin and multiple other global dictators. “Arrest the opposition, weaponise the judiciary, silence the media, spread fear and disinformation, protect your throne,” he has told me.
Now, ten years later, I have hardly been able to sleep since youth-led protests erupted across Turkey last month following the arrest of Istanbul’s mayor and President Erdoğan’s main rival, Ekrem İmamoğlu. He has been sent to Silivri Prison (also known as Marmara), the same jail my father was imprisoned in.
Once again, this represents a devastating attack on Turkey’s democratic rights and freedom of speech. I’ve been following reports from the handful of independent media that are still operating. According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), 90% of the media in Turkey is now under government control, which has allowed pro-government disinformation to run riot.
After 22 years in power, Erdoğan’s regime has left the economy in ruins, corrupted institutions, and suppressed basic rights. Since 2016, close to 150 local mayors have been dismissed or detained, and replaced with government-appointed bureaucrats. Leaders from three major political parties are now in prison. İmamoğlu and 91 elected officials from the Istanbul Mayor’s office face false corruption charges. It’s a mockery of justice – especially as so much of the ruling party’s corruption avoids scrutiny, and journalists, lawyers and anyone else who draws attention to the government are prosecuted.
Whilst protests continue despite blanket bans in major cities, digital censorship is rife as social media networks have been stifled by low bandwidth. X complied with government requests to shut down hundreds of accounts; TV news coverage has been cut and channels have been threatened with the cancellation of their licences. Meanwhile, 1,133 protestors have been arrested, with many beaten and detained. More than 300 of those arrested are students, and face potential jail sentences and a ban from ever running for political office, not to mention missing their studies. Footage of police brutality continues to fill my social media feeds – crowds of young people beaten and wounded, or shot with tear gas and rubber bullets, some directly in the eye.
The student demonstrations in İstanbul have ignited mass protests in nearly all Turkish cities. Young people have united across ideological and economic divides and catalysed a fractured political opposition into action, symbolised by the chant, “No liberation alone, all of us or none”. At one rally, Özgür Özel, the leader of the main political opposition the Republican People’s Party (CHP), thanked young people for ignoring his caution and taking the lead. A young man was pictured carrying his father on his back to the polls that had been set up to support the detained Istanbul mayor’s candidacy as a presidential candidate against Erdoğan; 15 million people turned out to vote for him in a day.
The spirit of solidarity continues to grow against increasing cruelty. Mothers who have spoken out for their children’s arrest have been detained themselves. Teachers supporting their students’ rights have been sacked, and students at hundreds of high schools have organised sit-ins to show solidarity with them. Thanks to the mobilisation, nearly half of the young people arrested have been released but 48 remain in prison. The political opposition has organised a nationwide boycott of pro-government businesses, and people have been detained for promoting it.
But people continue to show dissent. The CHP holds weekly peaceful gatherings across different cities and municipalities of Istanbul to keep the momentum going. The government recently blocked the access of spotlights to one major gathering in the Beyazıt district. Thousands of people pulled up their phone’s flashlights instead, defying the darkness and lighting up the town square and each other’s faces.
Despite digital censorship, the internet is also being used as a convening space. The Istanbul mayor’s account is currently banned from posting on X, so supporters have reacted by changing their profile photos to his, sprouting countless İmamoğlu accounts across the platform. When X started shutting these down for “likeness” complaints, they got creative by making alternative, hilarious versions of his photo instead. A whack-a-mole scenario has unfolded where every act of oppression creates its own act of resistance.
Today, one in four people aged 15 to 24 in Turkey is neither working nor in school. Youth unemployment has hit a record high in the country. Gallup’s Global Emotions Report conducted across 116 countries found that Turkey scored near the bottom of its rankings for “positive experiences” in 2024, as it has done since 2020, with high levels of unhappiness and anger. This social environment has no doubt fueled the protests.
A tweet from author, editor and teacher Taner Beyter sums it up: “Young friends, we have nothing to lose. We won’t be able to buy a car or a house. We won’t have stocks. Even if we succeed in the exams, we’ll be singled out in interviews. If we are taken to court, we don’t have ‘our guy’ to bail us out. We won’t get rich in this corrupt economy. Let’s carry on resisting against those stealing our future.”
For many Turkish youths, this is their first protest movement against a government they’ve only ever known as Erdoğan’s – just as mine was during the 2013 Gezi Park protests, a wave of demonstrations that began with the demolition of Istanbul’s Gezi Park. It quickly sparked into a movement against mounting injustices. At their core, both movements have their roots in inequality and crackdowns on free expression, and have been driven by a hope for change.
The millions who came out to the streets during the Gezi Park protests have since been separated and many were individually targeted. Once the crowds dissipated, no longer linked arm-in-arm, people were easier to subdue and prosecute with chilling effects.
But decades of crackdowns have failed to silence young people in Turkey. A photo on my X feed shows a poster raised by a young protester. Under the names of those who were killed during Gezi Park, a note reads: “I was nine years old then when my brothers stood up for me. I may have missed meeting them, but they’ve all gained a place in me. I promise I won’t let this be.”
There’s hope in collective reaction. Youth movements propel frustrations into action, catalysing a fractured opposition to work together for common goals. Established political parties may struggle to meet their demands at first, but they are slowly being shaped by them and changing their approach.
Around the world, young dissidents are speaking out to demand a better future in the face of mounting challenges from inequality to global conflict, state corruption to environmental decline.
Still, pressures against them are mounting. Their legitimate demands are being criminalised across the world from Iran to Palestine, USA to Belarus, Serbia to Myanmar, and more.
This is why at PEN International, the world’s largest association of writers, we’re building a youth network called the Young Writers Committee with representatives from 58 countries. We launched our web platform Tomorrow Club last week along with a podcast series, to amplify the stories of brave young people from around the world, and to create spaces for them to collaborate, learn about each other’s lives and struggles, and discuss how to cope with them.
It’s clear to see the shared experience across borders. We are all suffering from a shrinking space for free expression, and we want to uplift each other, exchange tools and tales, and establish supportive links for a shared future.
There is a common pride in the word “youth”. Although it paints a massively diverse group with a single brush, it can also help us come together against urgent challenges.
Cihan Tugal, a sociology professor at Berkeley University in California, USA, recently noted: “When Erdoğan fights for himself, he is also fighting for Trump, [Narendra] Modi, [Javier] Milei and Orbán, even if their interests do not always align. When the students and others in the street struggle against Erdoğan, they are also fighting for the rest of the world.”
That type of togetherness is demonstrated by young people protesting in Turkey and other countries. We should support and empower them to keep going. Their strong stance for justice and a better, fairer future can bring together fractured masses and pave the way against rising tides of authoritarianism.
8 May 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, Turkey
The alarming escalation in the persecution of Turkey’s media workers is part of a calculated strategy. With the detention of Istanbul’s democratically elected mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu on 19 March, the Turkish government has sent a chilling message to the public: nobody is safe, anyone can be arrested, so everybody should take caution.
Journalists make up a significant sum among the more than 1,879 detained in last month’s protests, 260 of whom were formally arrested. A further 382 people were reportedly arrested in Istanbul last week for “non-authorised demonstrations”.
Photographers, reporters, videographers, YouTubers, and social media commentators have been detained. Many have been taken into custody following dawn raids. Wearing visible press badges hasn’t helped reporters and videographers who filmed scenes of clashes outside the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality building in Saraçhane, where the opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), had organised week-long protest rallies. Covering the events became a crime as government officials warned that TV networks that gave airtime to these events would be shut down.
This was not an empty threat. On 24 March, 11 journalists were arrested in one day, including Yasin Akgül of the French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Bülent Kılıç, a World Press Photo award winner and one of Turkey’s most accomplished photographers. BBC’s long-time Istanbul correspondent, Mark Lowen, was taken from his hotel in Istanbul on 26 March, held for 17 hours, and expelled from the country where he had lived for five years.
Arbitrary releases have followed the arbitrary arrests. After being released, the AFP photographer Akgül and his colleagues were reportedly re-arrested the same day, before being re-released a few days later.
Turkey’s Information Technologies and Communication Authority (BTK) and Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) have used these arbitrary shock-and-awe tactics over the past weeks.
On the day of İmamoğlu’s detention, BTK imposed widespread restrictions on social media and messaging platforms in Istanbul, including YouTube, Instagram, X, and TikTok.
Because of the restrictions, neither locals nor tourists could use messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal for days. The impact was significant, given that Istanbul has a population of more than 15 million residents, making it the most populous and wealthiest city in Turkey.
BTK achieved the digital shutdown through bandwidth throttling, which significantly slows down internet access. The global internet censorship watchdog NetBlocks confirmed the use of bandwidth throttling.
The government, meanwhile, neither accepted nor denied throttling the internet for more than 15 million citizens, adding an air of mystery to the technical operation. Imposing restrictions without any announcement or explanation is part of the same political strategy that placed İmamoğlu behind bars.
A few days later, RTÜK issued a 10-day broadcast suspension for the leading opposition network, Sözcü TV. The TV channel’s coverage of protests “incited hatred and enmity among the public”, according to RTÜK.
Officials from the board continue to threaten the opposition media by revoking their licences. This means they could be shut down for good if network editors don’t abide by the government’s rules.
“Let’s see what will happen tomorrow morning,” mused Fatih Portakal, the Sözcü TV anchor, during a news bulletin shortly following the announcement of the 10-day suspension. Portakal told viewers his channel would go dark and display RTÜK’s decision for ten days. Sözcü continued its YouTube broadcasts and is now back on air on cable television.
The Turkish government already controls 90% of the media. From TV channel CNN Turk to newspaper Hurriyet, once respected mainstream media brands now operate as government mouthpieces. The government’s biggest concern is the remaining pockets of free expression: media outlets such as Bianet, Agos, Açık Radyo, and Medyascope have been demonised by the right-wing press, charged with serving foreign interests. In response, readers and viewers have been supporting these publications through donations.
But the level of government oppression has reached new heights, even by Turkey’s standards. In March, after the opposition party CHP launched a boycott campaign against firms with links to the government’s financial networks, a court shut down BoykotYap.com, the website containing the list of boycotted firms.
Hours later, the CHP launched a new website with an altered web address, BoykotYap.net. “Transform your consumption power into resistance. We will not see those who do not see the people!” CHP MP Pınar Uzun Okakın posted on X after announcing the new website’s URL.
In the eyes of the government, the unrest that followed the jailing of Istanbul’s democratically elected mayor is an opportunity. RTÜK recently announced that it would require two YouTube channels to register with the government to continue their streams, or their accounts would be blocked. Neither channel has applied for a licence and RTÜK hasn’t yet closed them down.
Fatih Altaylı, one of the targeted journalists, has nearly 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube, several times larger than pro-government channels like Yeni Şafak (712,000) and Sabah (373,000). The move follows RTÜK announcing last September that, under new regulation, YouTubers would need to obtain a licence in order to broadcast news. While the law is yet to be fully implemented, it is clearly already being used as a threat, and licenses can already be obtained. In the ideal world of the Turkish government, its bureaucrats would be permitted to censor content about Turkey regardless of platform.
The reaction to this vision of opacity and widespread censorship has been immense. Mass street protests and social media campaigns included a boycott against government-controlled media channels CNN Türk, the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), and the news agency Demirören News Agency (DHA).
As government intimidation continues to increase, Turkey’s media workers will likely develop new outlets: YouTube channels, Substacks, websites, anything that allows them to reach a growing audience hungry for objective news that is produced by reporters on the ground, despite all dangers.
28 Mar 2025 | Belarus, Egypt, Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Russia
On Sunday 30 March, I and mothers like me across the UK, will be waking up to a chorus of “Happy Mother’s Day!”, handmade cards and flowers thrust in our faces as we curse whoever made the decision to put the clocks forward on today of all days.
As anyone who is a mother knows, it’s a hard job. The balancing of family life, careers and – dare I say it – our own social lives; the emotional and mental load that falls to us; attempting to raise tiny people into well-rounded grown-up humans.
Mother’s Day is an opportunity to recognise all this, in ourselves and in our own mothers. But this Mother’s Day, I’d like to think about those who are mothering in extreme situations. Those who are fighting for the release of their children, who are held in prison in autocratic regimes after raising their voices. Those who are campaigning for the release of partners, after they stood up to autocrats. And those who are behind bars themselves after speaking out, and have been ripped away from their families.
One of those mothers is Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who ran for president against Alyaksandr Lukashenka in 2020 in Belarus. She is now in exile in Lithuania, where she leads the opposition coalition.
Tsikhanouskaya never wanted to be a politician. She describes herself as having been an “ordinary woman”, where her family was her world. The change of course was thrust upon her when her husband Siarhei Tsikhanouski, who was a willing opposition leader, was arrested in May 2020 then sentenced to 18 years in prison in December 2021.
With her husband incommunicado, Tsikhanouskaya has led the campaign for his release, taken up his political reins and continued to raise their two children.
On Belarus Freedom Day (25 March), just a few days before Mother’s Day, Lukashenka chose the national awareness day to be sworn in after his sham election. Meanwhile, Index on Censorship organised a protest outside the Belarusian embassy in London, writing the names of political prisoners in chalk on the pavement. Meanwhile, Tsikhanouskaya continued to raise the issue of Belarusian freedom on the international stage. From her office in Lithuania, she took time out to talk to me about what happens when the worlds of motherhood and campaigning collide.
“Raising children is a heavy duty, even if you’re an ordinary person,” she told me. And for her, there is an additional toll.
“You always live with the feeling of guilt, because you are not spending enough time with the children,” she said. A relatable feeling. “Very unexpectedly for them, I became […] the person who is defending their daddy, who is defending the country, the leader that had to travel a lot just to raise the alarm about the situation in Belarus.”
She tries to pack in time with her children when she can, but is conscious of not overwhelming them.
“All these years, we are also living with the pain,” she said. Her daughter was only four when her father was imprisoned, and Tsikhanouskaya does everything she can to make sure she remembers his voice and what he looks like. Her daughter writes letters, but they go unanswered.
“It’s very painful for her, and she’s asking, ‘Mum, maybe he is not alive anymore, and you are lying to us, or maybe he doesn’t love us anymore’,” she said.
Tsikhanouskaya is forced to have conversations with her children that no mother would ever want to conduct, about brutality and torture in prisons. Meanwhile her son, who is older, tries not to ask painful questions. He doesn’t want to write letters to his father, because he doesn’t want to flaunt his own freedom.
“I hope, I really believe that they’re learning a lot from these difficult lives. They’re learning how people can sacrifice their lives, their freedoms, a comfortable life, just for something bigger and more important,” Tsikhanouskaya said.
Beyond this, she said she feels the Belarusian people are learning something – that women can lead movements. This, she said, is not the message that was left to them from their Soviet Union past. Meanwhile, she is nourished by the Belarusian people, and by international communities.
This Mother’s Day, Tsikhanouskaya has a message for other mothers fighting similar battles: “Don’t even dare blame yourself that you are a bad mother because you have to be a good leader of your campaign. Your example is the best lesson your children can learn.”
She spares a thought too for the mothers who are political prisoners themselves, and describes how this tactic of separating mothers from their children is “like they cut a piece of your life”.
One of those women is Antanina Kanavalava, a member of Tsikhanouskaya’s campaign, who was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for preparing to take part in a mass riot, related to her role in running a Telegram channel. Her husband was also detained for the same reason, leaving behind their son and daughter, who are both under the age of eight and were taken abroad by their grandmother.
“Dictators know that children are the most effective leverage,” Tsikhanouskaya said.
In fact, Tsikhanouskaya herself had her children used against her. She was told to leave the country, and was threatened with prison if she refused.
She said that she was told: “Your husband’s already in prison. Your children will be in an orphanage.”
The winner of the Trustees Award at our Freedom of Expression Awards in 2024 also knows what it means to campaign for your husband’s release while continuing to raise children. Russian human rights activist Evgenia Kara-Murza, the advocacy director of the Free Russia Foundation, continued to raise her three children while she took up the campaign to fight for her husband’s release.
Vladimir Kara-Murza was arrested and jailed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in April 2022, after he’d already been poisoned twice. His wife spent the next two years travelling the world and speaking out against her husband’s imprisonment and Putin’s regime. In August 2024, he was finally freed as part of a prisoner exchange.
In Turkey, the Saturday Mothers have held sit-in vigils in Istanbul since 1995, for loved ones who have been forcibly disappeared or murdered. They have spent more than 1,000 Saturdays conducting peaceful demonstrations. After their 700th vigil in August 2018, they faced a crackdown, their peaceful protest broken up with tear gas, water cannons and arrests. Finally in March 2025, 45 members of the Saturday Mothers who had been arrested were acquitted.
Elsewhere in Turkey in 2024, mothers of Crimean political prisoners held a series of exhibitions called I Will Always Wait For You, My Child, demonstrating how their lives had been devastated by the Russian occupation of Crimea. Photos and captions were displayed on easels and online, each with the photo of a mother whose child was ripped away from her, detained and taken to Russia.
The exhibition was supported by Ukrainian NGO Human Rights Centre ZMINA, the Office of the Ombudsman of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Embassy in Turkey, and the Crimean Tatar diaspora.
“My children are my air. I will fight for them until my last breath,” wrote Dilyara Abdullaeva, a 70-year-old mother whose sons Uzeir and Teymur were sentenced to 12.5 and 16.5 years in a strict regime colony.
On the UK’s shores, Laila Soueif has been putting her life at risk for her son, British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah.
El-Fattah has been in and out of prison in Egypt for the last decade, after becoming a vocal pro-democracy campaigner. When his most recent sentence of five years came to an end last September, he was not released. His mother went on a hunger strike for the next five months, and was eventually told by doctors that her life was at risk.
When British Prime Minister Keir Starmer finally made a call to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in February this year, she switched to a partial hunger strike, to give the negotiation process time to take its course.
Soueif spoke to me over a video call this week, and she described herself as “functioning”.
“I realised that both the Egyptian and the British government are not going [to act], except when there is a crisis. So, I decided to create the crisis,” she said.
While in the past she has felt enthusiastic about campaigning, albeit sometimes exhausted and bored by the situation, since September she has felt very angry.
Soueif’s hunger strike lasted an incredibly long time before she deteriorated, but she doesn’t think that what she has done is particularly extraordinary.
“I really believe that most mothers would be willing to take that kind of risk for their kids,” she said. She is probably right. Regardless, it’s a position no mother wishes to be in.
A hunger strike was not Soueif’s first port of call. She had taken legal routes, staged demonstrations and spoken to the British government.
“In the end, none of it worked,” she said.
She is now worried she made the wrong choice coming off her hunger strike, as the momentum seems to have been lost. She is considering taking it up again, and can only hope there are motions of clemency from the Egyptian government around the end of Ramadan in a few days’ time. If she does go back on a hunger strike, she will be putting herself at huge risk.
Her message to other mothers fighting for their loved ones is this: “If you start a fight, don’t give up. Because however hard the fight is, to give up without achieving your objective will probably be much, much harder.”
In this fight, she has never been alone. She spoke about the incredible solidarity she has had, and the difference it has made.
From exile in Lithuania, Tsikhanouskaya acknowledged that mothers like herself need some time, care and a listening ear too. While she fights for freedom in Belarus, she also continues to be an ordinary woman.
“Save yourself first, and then go and ruin dictatorships,” she said.
Mothers, even when they’re not fighting autocrats, have incredible strength and resilience. Perhaps, as some of these women show, it is the mothers who will get dissidents out of prison, and take down oppressive regimes.
