21 Feb 19 | Awards, Campaigns -- Featured, Statements, Turkey, Turkey Statements
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Index on Censorship condemns a criminal indictment sent to a Turkish court against 16 civil society leaders including artist Meltem Arikan, actors Memet Ali Alabora and Pinar Ogun, and journalist Can Dündar.
“This farcical indictment shows how far Turkey’s government is willing to go to silence dissent and should show the world how much freedom of expression has degraded for all of the country’s citizens,” said Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of Index on Censorship.
The criminal court has 15 days to examine the indictment charging the 16 with attempting to overthrow the government for their part in the 2013 Gezi protests, the biggest anti-government demonstrations since President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Islamist government came to power in 2002. Almost six years after the protests during which tens of thousands people across Turkey took the streets, the 16 named in the indictment now faced a possible lifetime behind bars without the possibility of parole, according to a report in Ahval.
Arikan was nominated for a 2014 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award in the arts category.
The other 12 individuals named in the indictment are: Osman Kavala, Mücella Yapıcı, Tayfun Kahraman, Hakan Altınay, Gökçe Yılmaz, Can Atalay, Çiğdem Mater Utku, Hanzade Hikmet Germiyanoğlu, İnanç Ekmekçi, Mine Özerden, Yiğit Aksakoğlu, Yiğit Ali Ekmekçi.[/vc_column_text][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1550765322731-f7944837-909a-0″ taxonomies=”55″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
09 Apr 18 | Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan News, Germany, Mapping Media Freedom, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features, Russia, Turkey, Uzbekistan
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Journalists Erdem Gül and Can Dündar (Photo: Bianet)
Can Dündar, editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyyet, one of Turkey’s most popular newspapers, was awaiting an appeal on his case in Turkey from Germany when the news of the coup d’etat in his homeland came. Scores of arrests followed, and his lawyer advised that Dündar, who had just narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in May 2016 outside a courtroom and was facing over five years in prison for allegedly leaking state secrets, stay in Germany.
He recalls that it was the hardest decision in his life, 40 years of which he had devoted to working as a journalist in Turkey.
“I thought it was impossible to go back, decided to stay and work from Germany, and about a year ago I with a small team started a media organization here, Özgürüz.”
When it’s time to leave
As shocking as Dündar’s story is, it is hardly unusual in the Eurasian region, where, according to International Media Support, there was a steady decline in freedom of expression in Eurasia since 2011. While for years the Committee to Protect Journalists named Turkey the biggest jailer of journalists globally, there are other nations competing for this dubious title.
For some journalists, the alternative to being jailed is an exile. According to Yavuz Baydar, chief editor of Ahval Online, a Turkey-oriented news site based in Germany, “That’s an inevitable result of oppression in any country because as long as the conventional media are suffocated and put under the yoke of the powers, it leaves journalists with no other choice than leaving the profession altogether or moving abroad.”
However, only a select few survive the shock and reemerge as viable journalists continuing to work in exile.
Some of the most successful examples of the media in exile emerged from the region and operating in the more permissive environment of Western Europe, according to Jens Uwe Thomas with RSF Germany, are Meduza, Amurburg and Spektr, Russia-oriented news portals, as well as MeydanTV, an Azerbaijani multimedia outlet in exile, Dündar’s Özgürüz and Baydar’s Ahval Online.
Challenges of exile
Thomas says that upon settling in exile, the first step for the journalists is usually to legalize their status, and then they start looking for opportunities to establish their outlets.
“The most important thing is to support these media abroad in terms of their registration,” says Bektour Iskander, editor of Kyrgyz media Kloop, who monitors exiled media and is in the process of creating a digital resources kit for them, adding that oftentimes, the media can’t relocate abroad due to lack of financial resources or visas.
“In 2010 we were threatened by the special services because of our investigative reporting about the son of president Bakiyev [of Kyrgyzstan]. But we had no opportunity to leave the country. Only now I realize that we were facing scary consequences, even assassination. We were so clueless as to how to do that, or find the resources for that, we were saved by the miracle, a revolution happened in the country and the threat disappeared,” he recalls.
One common thread for these media across the board is that while their editorial teams operate in exile, they have networks of journalists working for them from inside their home country, says Thomas, adding that secure communication and creating collaborative work environment in such circumstances is often a challenge.
“Those are operating under the great risks, which causes a lot of hurdles and obstacles for continuity and consistency in the content quality,” Baydar adds. MeydanTV founder Emin Milli agrees, “Unfortunately, journalists and their family members are under pressure. The ones who work with us have been attacked, some tortured. Some parents of theirs were fired”. Galima Bukhabrayeva, former editor of exiled Uznews web site that was allegedly hacked by the Uzbek government and is now defunct, says: “In our case, the best journalists in Uzbekistan worked with us, because in our case it wasn’t enough to be a journalist, one had to be a patriot and a citizen, and a brave person, at that.”
But the relocation doesn’t always pose a challenge, says Aleksandr Kushnar, editor of Russian exiled media Amurburg. Commenting on the success of Meduza, he says, “It makes more sense for them to be located where they are for the reasons of safety of the editorial staff [because] their geographic location doesn’t affect the quality of their content.”
Uniformly, the exiled media representatives bemoan the perception in their home countries that these media lack the situational awareness on the ground. One example of successfully solving this challenge is MeydanTV, says Iskander, adding that “they encourage citizen journalism, their readers [are] often involved in the content creation, they send photos, videos, materials.”
Another challenge all of the exiled media managers interviewed for this article cite is the lack of funding, which poses a constant problem on the back of everybody’s mind. What complicates things for the managers of these outlets is the stipulation set forward by the international donors that the medium be located in-country in order to satisfy the funding criteria, which is impossible to abide by for those operating in exile.
Silver linings
But not all is hopeless for the uprooted journalists and media managers, and alongside obvious challenges, there are reasons for cautious optimism. There are quite a few success stories among the outlets who learned to capitalise on the advantages of operating from free environments.
Kushnar says attaining success is very difficult in reality, and he attributes it to the issues of funding, resources and teams. Speaking of the outlets, he says that “Their capabilities are seriously restricted. Oftentimes, they cannot compete with the leading news agencies that are funded very generously. We all know very well how RT is funded all over the world. The goal for these media is to identify the niches where they still can get in and tell the truth. It’s very difficult when pro-Kremlin outlets have an audience of 40 million, and your budget is a thousand times smaller.”
The upsides are quite self-evident, according to Anton Lysenkov, editor of Latvia-based Spektr: “Our situation is beneficial. We are not subjected to constant audits and provocations. Our work environment is much more peaceful. I admire those who continue to work from Russia, and we are trying to help them,” he adds.
According to Baydar, “The upside is you can see everything with a bird’s eye, in a free domain, analyse things much more clearly in a macro way which gives a lot of advantages to focus on the main areas that need to be covered.”
Some media in exile not only survive, but they manage to thrive and even increase their audiences, like Meduza. “They have millions of unique visitors a month, and it’s been rising year to year. They’re trusted,” says Milli. “They can work freely in Russia and come and go as they please. They’re a successful model.”
Galina Timchenko, Meduza’s editor-in-chief, cannot attribute the success of her outfit to any one strategy: “Unfortunately, there are no long-term plans and effective strategies for success in the current political climate. So far, we are not considering the possibility of moving to Russia because we cannot remain oblivious to the rising risks in that case. The media market in Russia is almost completely controlled by the state, and we don’t see a place for ourselves within such a market in the short term perspective,” she adds.
Preserving and rehearsing for the return
But what is the purpose of the media in exile and what is their end game?
While Kushnar says, exiled media preserve the freedom of the press in a dictatorship, Lysenkov adds that their goal is to supply the population with propaganda-free and less emotionally-charged content. Milli sees the enormous power of the free media to change the society for the better. “People have big hopes and need this, too. That’s why we keep working”.
Others see their ultimate goal as return home. Iskander cautions that “when a dictatorship in their home country comes to an end and [the media in exile] return home, their ratings start falling sharply. Because the credit of trust has been disintegrating, because the rhetoric could change from “at least someone is trying to do some good, even if it is from abroad” to “where have you been all these years while we were suffering?”
Despite such dangers, Bukharbayeva says, the ultimate goal of the exiled media is the return home. She points out that one loses focus and ability to write accurately when unable to visit their home country for over a decade, but “exiled media cannot exist indefinitely, and we must try to return because the time has come.”
Dündar, who has also started publishing a print magazine and opened a publishing house, is looking into opening a TV channel. He says his team’s current work is like a rehearsal in preparations for the future.
“It’s impossible to be in Turkey. But like the German Jews in WWII [who] came to Turkey, rehearsed there, came up with new ideas, and then went back to Germany after the war, we, Turks, are rehearsing and preparing for a better day in Turkey to return there”. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”10″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1523289736466-bd3f6e90-fdac-9″ taxonomies=”8607″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
28 Feb 18 | Europe and Central Asia, Mapping Media Freedom, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
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Recent developments in Turkey, once seen as a role model for the Muslim world, have shown that concepts such as the rule of law and right to free speech are no longer welcome by the Erdogan government.
With 156 journalists behind bars as of 26 February 2018 and the closing down of more than 150 media outlets by virtue of the state’s of emergency decrees, Turkey is the global leader in suppressing the media. The irony is that Erdogan was once a victim of an earlier oppressive regime in the late 1990s, having been dismissed as mayor of Istanbul, banned from political office and put in prison for three months for inciting religious hatred after he recited part of a poem by the Turkish nationalist Ziya Gokalp at a political rally.
The destruction of the rule of law in Turkey has been in the making since the anti-government Gezi Park protests and corruption probes of 2013. However, the government has made its intentions on the right to free speech crystal clear in the aftermath of the 15 July 2016 coup attempt. Many journalists and writers have been imprisoned over accusations as absurd as spreading subliminal messages to promote the coup.
Some of them — like Die Welt journalist Deniz Yucel — have languished in detention without charge for a year. Yucel was used as a bargaining chip against Germany and was only freed after chancellor Angela Merkel put pressure on the Turkish government. Immediately after he was let out of detention he published a video message in which he said: “I still don’t know why I was arrested and why I have been released.”
Ahmet Sik, another well-known journalist, was imprisoned because of his thorough investigations into the dark sides of the coup attempt. Can Dundar was arrested for publishing about Turkish intelligence’s illegal arms transfers to Syria. He was kept in prison for several months and eventually released on a constitutional court decision in February 2016. He fled the country and currently lives in Germany. Veteran journalists Sahin Alpay and Mehmet Altan, on the other hand, were not so lucky. They had been granted freedom by the constitutional court but a local court refused to implement their release. Recently, the Altan brothers, Mehmet and Ahmed, and another senior journalist, Nazli Ilicak, have been brutally sentenced to aggravated life prison sentences. Examples of the obscene unlawful imprisonment of journalists can go on and on.
The heart of the issue is that Turkish journalists do excellent work. They go to extraordinary efforts to make sure the public is informed about corruption, illegal arms transfers, extrajudicial killings of Kurds and minorities, shady affairs of the ruling party with the judiciary and unanswered questions about the coup attempt. The government doesn’t want to see these issues make headlines, and for defying it many journalists have sacrificed their freedom.
Behind the thin veneer of Turley’s judicial system is the political machine manufacturing countless crimes. After 500 days pretrial detention, Ahmet Turan Alkan, an intellectual and a respected writer, pointed that out by telling a judge: “Your honour, I know you can’t release me because if you decide to do so you will be jailed.”
Turkey’s journalists are faced with a unique problem: if they continue to lay bare the truth for all to see they risk exile or prison. In a normal country, journalists performing at the height of their abilities would be encouraged or rewarded, perhaps not by their governments but by the society as a whole. But not so in Turkey, where the government mouthpieces and politically-aligned media outlets spout the latest propaganda to manipulate Turks. Unfortunately, the majority of people actually believe that most of the arrested journalists are criminals or terror supporters.
This collective hostility to freedom of expression makes Turkey one of the biggest violators of press freedom in the 42 European-area countries Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project monitors; one of the lowest ranking countries in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index; and deemed “not free” by Freedom House’s evaluation.
It’s not just journalists. Academics, rights defenders, philanthropists and lawyers also face punishment for carrying out their professional responsibilities on behalf of the public. Disclosing the unlawful practices of those in power is all it takes for an individual to find themselves on the wrong side of the bars. As with Alpay and Altan, a court had ordered Taner Kilic, the chairman of Amnesty Turkey, to be released from detention, but the prosecutor put him back in prison. Kilic and his colleagues are being targeted in retribution for Amnesty International’s work to make the world aware of the inhumane conditions in Turkey’s post-coup attempt era.
The government’s intolerance toward dissenting voices can also be seen in its treatment of university professors, students and others who signed an Academics for Peace petition, which called for an end to violence in the Kurdish region of the country. Hundreds of distinguished academics have found themselves summoned to courtrooms. For taking a stand about the ongoing tragedy in Kurdish cities, the majority of these academics are dehumanised and defamed. They have not only become enemies of the state but enemies of all Turks.
Yes, the government has terrorised ordinary people with the narrative of the “world against great Turkey” and urged them to stand against outspoken figures who are the “spies, traitors and enemies”.
What do the EU and other international organisations do? Mostly expressing their “concern” in different formats such as “great”, “deep” or “serious”. Even the European Court of the Human Rights has not issued a single verdict against Turkey’s post-coup purge which has seen the country become the world’s largest jailer of journalists.
On the same day the Altan brothers were sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison, Tjorbon Jaglan, the secretary general of the Council of Europe was on a two-day visit in Turkey. He didn’t utter a single word about their situation. What else could better fit the definition of the “banality of evil” conceptualised by Hannah Arendt?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1519832159496-f7b69135-ce98-10″ taxonomies=”8607″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
08 Sep 17 | Media Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
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“Of course I am afraid. Only a fool wouldn’t be afraid at such a time,” said Ali Sirmen, a veteran journalist who has spent decades working at Cumhuriyet, whose writers and executives — five of whom remain imprisoned — are on trial facing terror charges.
This is not the first time journalists from Cumhuriyet have faced trial. The newspaper’s long history — it was founded in 1924 and christened by none other than the republic’s founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk; “cumhuriyet” is the Turkish word for republic — is one of “prisons and clampdowns” according to Cumhuriyet’s own wording. The newspaper has been shut down many times, many of its employees imprisoned and six of them were murdered over the course of its 93-year long history.
The 78-year-old Sirmen first started at Cumhuriyet in 1974 and wrote for the newspaper until 1991, when he walked with 80 other journalists in protest of the editorial line adopted by then editor-in-chief Hasan Cemal. After a seven year stint at the then-mainstream Milliyet, Sirmen returned to Cumhuriyet in 1998.
Sirmen was imprisoned both after the 12 March 1971 and 12 September 1980 military coups for his writing. He has seen both civilian and military prisons. He was eventually acquitted both times, but only after serving time in prison.
“If I had stayed 20 more days in prison in the 12 September period, I would have completed the sentence they were seeking for me,” he remembers. “The practice of pretrial detention as punishment for journalists started in those times,” Sirmen said.
Keeping up appearances
According to Sirmen, trial proceedings of military eras were mostly a show, but they were still less farcical than the courtrooms of post-15 July Turkey. “They [the courts of military rule periods] at least tried to keep up appearances. They abided by established procedures; here, there is no such concern at all.”
“As someone who knows the prisons of the coup periods, I have said many times that the situation is much worse today. For example, when I was acquitted in the Madanoğlu trial [in which Sirmen was accused of supporting a failed coup in 1971] the Military Court of Cassation overruled our convictions twice in spite of pressure from the military regime. Can such a thing happen today?” he asked.
Hasan Cemal, the editor-in-chief whom Sirmen walked out on in 1991, agrees. “Cumhuriyet was shut down during both coup periods; saw immense levels of crackdowns, its writers were imprisoned many times, but not to the extent that we see today.”
Like Sirmen, Cemal agrees that the judiciary tried to act in compliance with the law despite pressure. “There was no rule of law in the 12 September period; true, but to a certain extent, there was a state that heeded laws. We don’t have that anymore.”
A secular, forward-looking newspaper
But Cemal doesn’t believe in comparisons. “It might be misleading comparing one grievance with another. If journalism is considered a crime in our day, if freedom of expression is being trampled under feet, if the media today has only one voice, what good would it do to compare this horrible situation with the 12 March or 12 September period?”
Although the two journalists might have locked horns in the past, both name “belief in democracy, secularism and the rule of law” as the definitive values which Cumhuriyet stands for. Both of them also agree that it is precisely why the newspaper, which is doing poorly both financially and in terms of circulation, has come under attack. Why would anyone bother to silence an apparently moribund newspaper?
“The way Cumhuriyet views secularism, democracy, the supremacy of law, freedoms and human rights; its face is turned towards the west; all of these are unacceptable for the Erdoğan mentality. Because if Cumhuriyet is the west, then Erdoğan is the east,” according to Cemal. [/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”black”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Media freedom is under threat worldwide. Journalists are threatened, jailed and even killed simply for doing their job.” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fcampaigns%2Fpress-regulation%2F|||”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship monitors media freedom in Turkey and 41 other European area nations.
As of 8/9/2017, there were 522 verified violations of press freedom associated with Turkey in the Mapping Media Freedom database.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship campaigns against laws that stifle journalists’ work. We also publish an award-winning magazine featuring work by and about censored journalists. Support our work today.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator color=”vista_blue”][vc_column_text]A game of thrones
The incident in which dozens of writers left Cumhuriyet en masse in protest of Cemal in 1991 was not the first episode of ideological shifts in the newspaper’s history manifested as a show-down. In fact, the newspaper is notorious for infighting, which, this time, gave the prosecutors material to base the current trial on. In fact, two reporters whose testimonies were included in the indictment still work at the newspaper and they will testify in Monday’s trial.
On 2 April 2013, the Cumhuriyet Foundation — which appoints the editor-in-chief of the newspaper — saw a change of guard: a more liberal group, as opposed to the traditionally hard-line Kemalist executives, was elected to the seats on the foundation’s executive board. Testimony from some of the former board members are also included in the indictment, and these individuals will also testify — most likely against the defendants — in the hearings that begin on 11 September.
The new foundation team, the prosecutor says, hired columnists and allowed reporting that served the purposes of the Fethullah Gülen Network, which is referred to as a terrorist organisation by Turkish courts.
A legal battle over the foundation’s leadership is still ongoing and pro-government media has openly sided with the old guard at Cumhuriyet. That is a separate case, but Cumhuriyet being forcefully returned to its previous executives is not a far-fetched possibility.
A brief history of government pressure on Cumhuriyet
Detentions and arrests
Detention and imprisonment of Cumhuriyet journalists go back a long way. In one of the notable cases in 1962, contributor Şadi Alkılıç and editor Kayhan Sağlamer were arrested and imprisoned over an article published in Cumhuriyet praising socialism. Alkılıç was acquitted in 1967 after a higher court overruled his sentence handed down over socialism propaganda.
İlhan Selçuk, one of the newspaper’s iconic names, who was also the founder of the Cumhuriyet Foundation, and the then editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Oktay Kurtböke, and several other Cumhuriyet writers were detained after the 12 March 1971 coup d’état — along with several others. Selçuk was subject to torture in prison in this period, where he and his fellow defendants were accused of supporting a failed coup attempt that would have taken place three days prior to the actual coup.
Ali Sirmen, Erdal Atabek and Ataol Behramoğlu were imprisoned by the courts of the 1982 military regime for membership of the left-wing Peace Association.
More recently, in 2008, the newspaper’s Ankara Bureau Chief Mustafa Balbay was imprisoned in an investigation into Ergenekon, a behind-the-scenes network which allegedly plotted to overthrow the AKP government, according to the prosecutor. Columnist Erol Manisalı was also arrested in the same investigation in 2009; he was released after three months in prison. İlhan Selçuk was also detained in the same investigation.
In May 2016, the newspaper’s former editor-in-chief Can Dündar and Ankara Bureau Chief Erdem Gül were arrested over a news story which suggested that the Turkish government sent weapons and ammunition to armed jihadist groups in Syria.
Outside the current case, Oğuz Güven, editor of the newspaper’s internet edition, was imprisoned for a month when for a headline cumhuriyet.com.tr used describing the accidental death of a prosecutor who led investigations into the 15 July 2016 failed coup.
Closures:
The newspaper was shut down for the first time on October 29 1934 for 10 days. Then it was shuttered for 90 days in 1940 over its publications that went against the official line of the government. After the 12 March 1971 coup d’état, it was shuttered for 10 days. It was shut down twice following the September 12 1980 coup d’état in Turkey by the military junta, first over an article by İlhan Selçuk, which praised “Kemalizm” and later over a book written by the newspaper’s chief columnist and owner Nadir Nadi.
Assassinations:
Cumhuriyet journalists have also faced fatal attacks. Six Cumhruiyet journalists, all of whom were known for their staunch secularist views, have been killed since 1978. Columnist Server Tanilli, an Istanbul University academic, was left paralysed following an armed attack on 7 April 1978. Cumhuriyet columnist Cavit Orhan Tütengil was assassinated on 7 December 1979 while waiting for a public bus.
The newspaper also took its share of the violence at the height of Turkey’s unsolved murders — which are commonly believed to be state sponsored– in the 1990s. Columnist Muammer Aksoy, who was also the president of the Atatürkist Thought Assassination, was shot dead while he was on his way home in Ankara in 1990. Socialist columnist Bahriye Üçok was killed by a bomb package sent to her house on 6 October 1990. Investigative journalist Uğur Mumcu was killed when a bomb placed in his car detonated on Jan. 24, 1993. Columnist Onat Kutlar died as a result of injuries sustained also in a bomb attack on 30 December 1994. Cumhuriyet’s Ahmet Taner Kışlalı was also killed in front of his house in a bomb attack in 1999.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1504883275252-0c531056-a363-8″ taxonomies=”7790″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
