With 90% of the country’s media now controlled by the state, it is becoming harder and harder to report independently
The Turkish government’s grip on journalism is tightening
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Kaya Genç
Kaya Genç is a contributing editor to Index on Censorship magazine. He is a novelist and essayist from Istanbul. His writing has appeared, mostly online but also in print, in The Paris Review, The Believer, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The London Review of Books, The New Republic, Prospect, Time, Salon and Guernica Magazine.
The dichotomy of Turkey
Erdoğan is keen to trumpet Turkey’s role in the recent prisoner swap but the president remains the most relentless implementer of censorship in Turkish history
How ‘industrial football’ was used to silence protests
Football fans turned out in large numbers during the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul. They’ve paid the price since
It’s not easy being green
Environmental activism is alive and well in Turkey, despite the peddling of conspiracy theories and government efforts to discredit campaigners
Turkish censors vs Netflix, series 1 episode 1
All that is solid in the Turkish media melted into air over the past year, and much of the entertainment content have migrated from traditional platforms to streaming services like YouTube and Netflix.
Kaya Genç: On “coup plots”, journalism trials and Turkey’s need for a proper dissensus
The modern crisis in Turkey’s journalistic freedoms began in 2008. Index on Censorship magazine’s Kaya Genc revisits the “coup cases” that ended up turning Turkish journalism into a field of feuds and hostilities
Turkey: Number of “insulting Turkishness” cases drops as parliament discusses changing definition of citizenship
There has been a significant decrease in the number of cases brought under Turkey’s infamous Article 301, a recent news investigation has shown. But the law continues to be rigorously implemented. The original version of Article 301 made it illegal...
Why was this Turkish sociologist given a life sentence?
Fifteen years after she was detained for allegedly perpetrating a terrorist attack in Istanbul’s Spice Bazaar, and eleven years after she was acquitted of those charges, the Turkish sociologist Pınar Selek again found herself on the wrong side of...
The trouble with Taraf
Kaya Genç looks at how Turkey’s “first truly liberal newspaper” has shaken up the country’s media
As Turkey lifts ban against hundreds of books, we discover how comic Captain Miki offended the Turkish state
Judging by sales figures, Turkish readers love comics magazines and graphic novels, but the political and military leaders of the country have had little patience for them, an examination of Turkey’s banned books revealed last month. On 5 January...
Turkish Prime Minister takes on historical soap opera
In Turkey, television drama is big business. A handful of big-budget productions attract millions of viewers every week, both at home and abroad. According to Abdullah Çelik, the head of property rights department in the culture ministry, more than...
Turkey: Index award winner faces jail
The conviction of Ferhat Tunç signals the marginalisation of dissident Turkish voices, says Kaya Genç