07 Jul 22 | News and features, Turkey, Turkey
In the name of counter-terrorism, police raided the houses of journalists in Diyarbakır, in the Kurdish region of Turkey, on 8 June. They took into custody 19 journalists, two media employees and one citizen, who had given an interview to a journalist. Two criminal investigations were announced to target “the Press Structure of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) and Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK)”.
Journalists who work in eastern Turkey face tremendous pressures as they are almost always the ones who expose rights violations by the state in a conflict between Turkish authorities and Kurdish groups, which has been going on since the early 1980s. The PKK has called for more rights for Kurdish people, and the armed conflict has cost over 40,000 lives. Turkey considers the PKK a terrorist organisation, as do the EU and US.
In addition to the journalists’ houses, police raided the offices of three production companies and the women’s news agency Jin News in an unlawful manner. The search conducted at the Jin News agency was carried out without any representative of the agency being notified or present. The police are yet to provide a record of what has been confiscated.
After being extended twice, the custody period eventually amounted to eight days. In her indictment-like extension petitions, the prosecutor directly accused the journalists without presenting any evidence. Furthermore, she justified the extensions by saying the confiscated material needed extensive examination. According to the lawyers, however, this long custody period served the manufacturing of new evidence.
The interrogation of the journalists began on 15 June at around 9am. The prosecutor questioned the journalists about their professional activities. She asked why they worked at their respective media outlets, why they produced particular programmes or news articles, and why they used specific expressions.
While neither the lawyers nor the journalists were granted access to the investigation file – which violated their right to defence – investigation details were leaked to media organisations close to the government. According to these news reports, journalists are accused of “operating as the PKK and KCK Press Structure.”
After an interrogation lasting nearly 20 hours, the prosecutor referred 18 journalists, two media employees and one citizen to the Diyarbakır 1st Criminal Judgeship of Peace and requested their arrest on suspicion of “membership of a terrorist organisation”. Within 15 minutes, the judge ruled to arrest 16 of the journalists. In the decisions, the judge did not refer to any concrete evidence other than the testimonies of defectors from the PKK who claimed that the journalists produced content for Sterk TV, Medya Haber TV, Jin TV and Rohani TV – all of which are considered as PKK outlets by Turkish authorities. The judge released four journalists, one media employee and the sole citizen from custody, along with judicial control measures.
This is not an isolated incident. A recent example is when five journalists reported on two villagers who were tortured and thrown out of a helicopter by security forces in Van, also in eastern Turkey. Four of them were held in pre-trial detention for six months until the first hearing. Accompanied with discrediting campaigns on social and mainstream media, these journalists were tried under terrorism charges and were eventually acquitted. Acquitted or not, this recent operation is the largest of its kind targeting the Kurdish press in recent years. It is reminiscent of the infamous “KCK Press Trials”, in which 46 journalists and media employees have been standing trial for the past 10 years.
This latest operation targeting Kurdish journalists signals that the government is once again flexing its muscles to silence journalists in the region ahead of the upcoming elections next year.
The 16 arrested journalists:
Lezgin Akdeniz: Camera operator, TV show producer
Safiye Alagaş: Jin News Director
Serdar Altan: Freelance journalist, Dicle Fırat Journalists’ Association (DFG) Co-chair
Zeynel Abidin Bulut: Xwebûn editor, DFG executive
Ömer Çelik: TV show host, former Mesopotamia News Agency editor
Suat Doğuhan: Camera operator, Pel Production owner
Mehmet Ali Ertaş: Xwebûn Editor-in-chief
Ramazan Geciken: Pel Production camera operator
Mazlum Doğan Güler: Piya Production camera operator
İbrahim Koyuncu: Camera operator, video editor
Abdurrahman Öncü: Pel Production camera operator
Aziz Oruç: Mesopotamia News Agency editor
Mehmet Şahin: Xwebûn columnist, teacher
Neşe Toprak: Pel Production TV show producer
Elif Üngür: Piya Production TV show host
Remziye Temel: Piya Production accountant
For more details on the arrests, visit MLSA.
18 Nov 20 | News and features, Turkey
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”115574″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]On 11 September, the peaceful silence of the early morning in Sürik, a tiny, unassuming village located in the barren yet beautiful mountains of Van, an eastern and mostly Kurdish populated province in Turkey, was broken by the sound of a violent explosion. The blast was so powerful that the earth shook; the adobe houses of the village rattled.
The Turkish military had been conducting operations in the region since early September, and clashes between soldiers and militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group which has been fighting for Kurdish independence for more than four decades, had been more frequent than usual. The villagers saw military helicopters circling the usually serene skies above Çatak.
By the time the sun had melted the previous night’s fragile frost, one of the choppers had landed in an area behind the village. They took off a while later, taking two of the villagers with them.
The two men, Osman Şiban, 50, and Server Turgut, 63, reappeared two days later, in the ward of a military hospital in Van. While these are nowhere near rare occurrences in the Turkish southeast, the country would have never heard about the horrific torture the two men went through if it wasn’t for a news report published on the day of their reappearance by Cemil Uğur, a Van-based journalist with the Mezopotamya News Agency (MA). The report claimed they were beaten and pushed off a helicopter.
The Van governor’s office denied the allegations of torture, saying the two villagers, captured as part of an operation in the region named Yıldırım-10 Norduz (after an indigenous mountain goat), ignored commands to stop.
In the following days, other reporters—Adnan Bilen, the Van bureau chief of MA, Şehriban Abi from the feminist Kurdish news agency JinNews and freelancer Nazan Sala—all known for reporting on human rights violations in Turkey’s Kurdish regions, followed the story, filling in the details, talking to the families and witnesses, gathering documents from forensic invesetigations and prosecutors.
An interview with Siban from his hospital bed by Uğur on 17 September featured a photo of Şiban, whose bloody eyes (top) left little to the imagination about the horrors the two men must have had undergone, whom the journalist talked with in his hospital bed.
On 30 September, Turgut died after days in intensive care.
Less than a week after Turgut’s death, the homes of the journalists reporting on the case were raided and, a few days later, they were arrested on charges of “membership of a terrorist organisation”.
Journalists punished for reporting the news
More details of the unspeakable torture the two men had gone through came out on 2 November, when independent lawmaker Ahmet Şik, who travelled to the region in late October, revealed the details of his investigation at a press conference in parliament.
The two men were beaten on the chopper, later, pushed off — presumably after it landed – and then beaten to near-death by 150 gendarmerie soldiers in scenes in a “state-sanctioned lynching.”
Şık’s report also detailed other ways in which the state attempted to cover up the torture of the two villagers in addition to arresting the people who reported on the case. He later told the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA),whose lawyers represent three of the imprisoned Van reporters, that the journalists, who the authorities assert were detained on the basis of an investigation launched prior to the Van incident, were clearly being punished for their reporting on the ordeal of the two villagers.
A ‘grave danger’ for all journalists
Lawyer Veysel Ok, co-director of the MLSA, notes that this punishment for reporting the news has the power to have serious repercussions for other journalists in Turkey, where 86 journalists are in prison.
He points to several alarming developments regarding the investigation into the journalists, saying, “In the journalists’ arrest order, the court accused these journalists of ‘reporting on social incidents against the state but in favour of the terrorist organisation PKK/KCK’ in order to incite agitation, and ‘making news in a continuous way, with variety and in high numbers.’”
To highlight the gravity of the possible consequences, “these journalists are all Kurdish and have been working in the region, and specifically in Van, for a very long time.”
“Their reporting has always shed light on human rights violations against Kurdish citizens in the region,” Ok said.
The arrest warrant also accuses the journalists of “criticising and harming the reputation of the anti-terrorism effort of the Republic of Turkey”. Another accusation is “identifying oneself as a journalist and making news reports for a fee without being a press card holder”.
“So the court is arguing that the four reporters are not ‘real’ journalists on the grounds that they don’t have an official press card issued by the president’s office,” Ok said. “There is not a single line in the Turkish legislation that stipulates that one needs a press card to be a journalist. Press card accreditation is necessary only for following government officials’ activities and the practice has been, as of late, to only issue them to those journalists who work for the pro-government media, so this press card mention in the warrant can have far-reaching consequences for any journalist in Turkey.”
The justifications put forth by the court are “unacceptable,” the lawyer added.
“The judiciary aims to create a chilling effect on all journalists, like the Sword of Damocles,” he said. “That’s why we find this case extremely important, care about it deeply and demand solidarity from fellow journalists, and everyone who cares about freedom of speech and not just in Turkey but all around the world.”
Ok also noted another worrying problem about the case; that the prosecutor who is conducting the investigation against the Van journalists is the same one that conducts the investigation on the lynching of the two villagers.
“The arrest decision is a very alarming one for journalism,” he said. “This is why our organisation has taken on this case. We will take this unlawful arrest first to the Constitutional Court and then to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).”
Ok said he was in Van on 27 October where he visited the four journalists in prison and noted that although they seem to be in good spirits, they also demand solidarity and support from the outside world against the injustice they are suffering for doing their jobs.
“Van is a far-off city, in the easternmost part of the country,” Ok said. “It is important that this case is not forgotten because it is not in Istanbul. These journalists have written news reports that should win an award. We will be in Van at the time of the first hearing to support these journalists and their journalism. They deserve the support of their colleagues and rights groups everywhere for bringing out the truth.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”55″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
17 Jul 20 | Index Shots, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]On 5 July 2017, human rights defenders from a number of different organisations gathered on the island of Büyükada for a workshop on the protection of digital information.
On the third day of the workshop, ten of the attendees were arrested at gunpoint and later charged with aiding the Fethullah Gülen Terrorist Organization, which President Erdoğan blames for 2016’s failed military coup.
The Istanbul 10, as they became known, were released on bail on October 25th 2017, after 113 days in detention but then faced three years of court hearings.
On 3 July 2020, former Amnesty Turkey chair Taner Kılıç was convicted of membership of the Fethullah Gülen Terrorist Organization and sentenced to 6 years 3 months in prison.
Meanwhile, Özlem Dalkıran, İdil Eser and Günal Kurşun were convicted of assisting the organization and sentenced to 25 months, pending an appeals process which could last years.
As the sentences were announced, Index’s editor-in-chief Rachael Jolley spoke with Özlem Dalkıran.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/jFAojAdwiQk”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
15 Jan 20 | News and features, Turkey
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Criminal charges, physical attacks and internet restrictions were among the main tools used to stifle dissent in Turkey last year, according to new analysis from Index on Censorship’s Monitoring and Advocating for Media Freedom project[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]2019 was not a good year, once again, for journalists in Turkey, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continued his media crackdown. Wide-ranging and ill-defined laws were used to target independent journalists. They faced criminal charges, arbitrary detentions, physical attacks, prison sentences and internet restrictions. More than 120 journalists remained in prison in Turkey during 2019.
Journalists who reported on Kurdish issues or worked with pro-Kurdish media outlets were more likely to be targeted by the authorities and were inordinately more likely to be charged with terrorism-related offences. And following Turkey’s military operation in Syria in October, on 10 October the public prosecutor prohibited any criticism of “Operation Peace Spring”, leading to an intensification of the crackdown on journalists.
Ahead of the UN’s Universal Periodic Review of Turkey at the end of this January (a process in which the human rights records of the UN member states is reviewed), we publish the three most frequently used means of targeting journalists in Turkey in 2019, as recorded by our Monitoring and Advocating for Media Freedom project:
1. VEXATIOUS CHARGES
Journalists were repeatedly charged with “insulting a public official” or “insulting the president” under Articles 125 and 299 respectively of the Turkish penal code.
On 19 May, for example, local journalist Mustafa Yayla was sent to prison in Izmir to serve a sentence of 11 months and 20 days, after an appellate court upheld his conviction of insulting Erdogan in his social media posts.
Prosecutions under Article 299 have risen sharply in recent years: since Erdogan came to power in 2014, they have increased from 132 to more than 6,000 in 2017. Data is not yet available for 2019 but according to Birgun newspaper, 5,223 people – including 128 children – stood trial on the charge of insulting the president in 2018, with journalists often being singled out and the charge being especially damaging.
2. PHYSICAL ATTACKS
Physical attacks on journalists took place throughout 2019, but as outlined in Index’s July report, there was an unprecedented rise in May when eight incidents were recorded. Some of these were incredibly serious, such as on 10 May, when Yeniçağ columnist Yavuz Selim Demirağ sustained serious injuries in an assault hear his home in Ankara. Although police detained six suspects, all were released, reportedly on the grounds that “the state of health of the victim was not life-threatening”.
The violence was largely attributed to political divisions, specifically between nationalists and conservatives, which were heightened in the wake of the annulment of the Istanbul mayoral elections and ahead of the second round, which took place in late June.
3. INTERNET RESTRICTIONS
Following his visit to Turkey in 2016, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of expression, called on the Turkish government to “refrain from excessive blocking and filtering of content and limit its requests for takedowns to actual cases of incitement.” Nonetheless, the government continued to obstruct freedom of expression online. Despite the Constitutional Court ordering the repeal of the ban on Wikipedia (which has been in place for nearly three years), the ban remains in place.
In July, the Ankara Criminal Judgeship of Peace ordered that 136 websites, including the news outlets ETHA and Gazete Fersude, be blocked. The order cited a law relating to “national security and preservation of order and peace in society”.
Then on 1 August, a regulation mandating online content providers, including all online news outlets, to obtain a broadcasting license from the radio and television watchdog RTUK, was published. If content providers do not comply with the RTUK’s guidelines they are given 30 days to adjust their content or face having their licenses suspended for three months and later cancelled.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
