27 Jan 16 | Campaigns, Statements, Turkey, Turkey Statements
Journalists Erdem Gül and Can Dündar (Photo: Bianet)
A coalition of leading international free expression and press freedom groups condemns the Turkish government’s refusal to allow supporters to visit journalists Can Dündar and Erdem Gül, who are behind bars for reports claiming that Turkey’s intelligence agency secretly armed Islamist rebel groups in Syria, and calls for their immediate release.
Dündar, editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet, and Gül, the newspaper’s Ankara bureau chief, are being held at the high-security Silivri Prison, west of Istanbul, reportedly awaiting trial on charges of aiding a terrorist organisation, espionage and disclosure of classified documents.
The charges remain unclear, as the defendants have not been allowed to review indictments against them. However, the case is believed to stem from a May 29, 2015 report published in Cumhuriyet that included a video purportedly showing Turkish security forces searching intelligence agency trucks en route to Syria containing crates of ammunition and weapons.
In recent years, when nearly 100 journalists were held in Turkish prisons, journalists in Turkey were often allowed to visit their imprisoned colleagues. However, in recent months, Turkey’s Justice Ministry has effectively barred most visits for both Dündar and Gül; the only visitors allowed to see them are close family members, lawyers or members of Turkey’s Parliament.
Following the Ministry’s recent refusals to respond to visitation requests put forward by journalists’ groups in Turkey and others, a coalition of 11 international free expression and press freedom defenders submitted a joint request on Jan. 8, 2016 seeking permission to visit Dündar and Gül on Wednesday, Jan. 27.
The coalition includes the International Press Institute (IPI), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), ARTICLE 19, Index on Censorship, the Ethical Journalism Network (EJN), PEN International, the World Association of Newspaper Publishers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and the South East Europe Media Organisation.
On Jan. 22, however, Turkey’s Justice Ministry denied the request. In a response, the Ministry cited articles of statute and regulation requiring the Ministry’s permission for such a visit and indicated that the request was denied because permission to visit was not given.
The coalition condemns Turkey’s refusal to allow supporters to visit Dündar and Gül, who were held in solitary confinement for 40 days before finally being allowed to share a cell together early this month, as well as the charges against them.
The persecution of these journalists in retaliation for having reported on a matter of urgent and undeniable public interest, and the refusal to permit visitation in the manner that any other prisoner would be allowed, represent a violation of their rights and a gross abuse of authority. This wrong is compounded by the fact that neither Dündar nor Gül have been convicted of any crime, much less informed of the allegations against them.
The misuse of anti-terror law against these journalists is only the latest in a litany of such cases in Turkey, and joins a list of developments that illustrate growing authoritarianism and a blatant erosion of human rights. They include politicisation of the judiciary, the similar abuse of other criminal laws, the imposition of outright bans on disseminating certain content, the use of state agencies and economic levers to silence media outlets, verbal and – in some cases – physical attacks on critical journalists, and the orchestration of online hate campaigns targeting government critics, among others.
The coalition accordingly calls on Turkish authorities to free Dündar and Gül without delay, to drop all charges against them, and to free all other journalists currently detained in connection with their journalism or the opinions they have expressed. It further urges lawmakers in Turkey to take steps to reverse the country’s trend toward authoritarianism and urges the governments of democratic countries to pressure the Turkish government to meet its human rights commitments under domestic and international law.
-The International Press Institute (IPI)
-The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
-Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
-The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)
-The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)
-ARTICLE 19
-Index on Censorship
-The Ethical Journalism Network (EJN)
-PEN International
-The World Association of Newspaper Publishers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA)
-The South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO)
11 Jan 16 | Bulgaria, Europe and Central Asia, Mapping Media Freedom, mobile, News and features
Journalists of the Bulgarian investigative news website Bivol.bg are facing an orchestrated smear campaign that’s unusual even for Bulgaria, the worst-ranking EU member in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.
The attacks can be linked to mainstream media outlets controlled by the Bulgarian media mogul and lawmaker Delyan Peevski, and seem to be a response to a number of investigations published recently by Bivol.bg, all involving Peevski in one way or another.
“Even if it is not like in the beginning, the smear campaign did not end,” Bivol’s editor-in-chief, Atanas Chobanov, told Index on Censorship in December 2015.
During the autumn, articles denigrating Chobanov and Assen Yordanov — Bivol’s founder, co-owner and director — began appearing in media outlets such as the Bulgarian weekly Politika, the Telegraph, Monitor and Trud dailies, as well as the news website Blitz, which are controlled either directly or through proxies by Delyan Peevski, an MP from the parliamentary group of the Turkish minority party, Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF).
According to a summary published by OCCRP, the articles allege that Yordanov uses Bivol.bg to publish fake stories to blackmail politicians and business people. The attack pieces allege that Bivol.bg publishes stories about environmental issues to serving the interests of fake eco-activists who pose as people concerned about the environment to extract cash from firms that want to build in the Bulgarian mountains and on the Black Sea coast.
There are allegations saying that Atanas Chobanov is a former Komsomol activist (the youth division of the Bulgarian Communist Party), aspired to a political career, and has links to a businessman whose media strongly oppose Peevski. Some articles insinuate that Chobanov works for foreign intelligence services; and that he lives a luxurious life in Paris where he milks the social welfare system. (The latter allegation is interesting because in 2013, it was Chobanov who uncovered that former planning and investment minister Ivan Danov was collecting €1,800 per month in unemployment benefits in France while working two jobs in Bulgaria.)
The pieces give a thoroughly negative depiction of Chobanov, saying that he is greedy, aggressive, mentally unstable, narcissistic, disliked and unwanted.
The campaign culminated on 10 October, when a crew of the Bulgarian TV Channel 3, a television where Peevski is a co-owner, showed up at the rented apartment in Paris where Chobanov and his family lives.
“I was at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Lillehammer, Norway,” Chobanov said, adding that the crew did not try to contact him by phone, e-mail or by any other means in advance. The journalist believes they must have known that he was away because he made a public announcement about his upcoming trip and he was tweeting from Lillehammer.
Although Bivol.bg was the target of similar articles in the past, the ongoing campaign started when the investigative news site published proof that Peevski is a shareholder at the Bulgarian cigarette maker Bulgartabac, a former state-owned company that underwent a controversial privatization process in 2011.
Then the journalists started publishing a story about the disappearance of €26 million ($28.3 million) from an EU food aid program for the poor, where the majority shareholders of Bulgaria’s First Investment Bank (FIB) were implicated. “After the Bulgarian bank crash, Peevski moved his assets, his credits and deposits to this bank, so this investigation also hurts Peevski’s interests,” Chobanov said.
Next, Bivol.bg broke “Yaneva Gate”, a series of stories based on leaked phone conversations between former Sofia City Court president Vladimira Yaneva and fellow judge Roumyana Chenalova over unlawful surveillance warrants that Yaneva had signed.
In those conversations, the judges mentioned Peevski by his first name, Delyan. “The Prosecutor General, one of the men of Peevski, is also involved,” Chobanov pointed out, adding that the story provoked an earthquake in Bulgarian politics, causing justice minister Hristo Ivanov to resign.
“It is a judicial battle now. We are turning to courts to stop the smear campaign, and we are also defending ourselves from legal complaints filed for the investigations we did in the past,” Chobanov said.
Reporters Without Borders expressed support and sympathy for Chobanov, condemning the smear campaign directed against him. “We can only condemn what are clearly attempts to intimidate Bivol’s journalists,” said Alexandra Geneste, the head of the Reporters Without Borders EU/Balkans desk. “Their investigative work is perfectly legitimate and we express our most sincere support and sympathy for them.”
The smear campaign orchestrated by the media outlets controlled by Peevski took an unexpected turn when they accused Xavier Lapeyre de Cabanes, the French Ambassador to Bulgaria with unacceptable meddling in Bulgaria’s affairs after he shared on Twitter a link to the press release by Reporters Without Borders with the comment: “Press freedom has no borders.”
The Bulgarian Association Network for Free Speech also issued a position saying that “the integrity of Bivol’s investigations and publications has not been and is not challenged in any way, despite repeated attempts to pressure our colleagues. (…) We have no reason to doubt the good faith of our colleagues, the journalist from Bivol (…).”
02 Nov 15 | Campaigns, Index Reports, Press Releases, Statements, Turkey, Turkey Reports
The International Press Institute (IPI) released a report on the Joint International Emergency Press Freedom Mission to Turkey undertaken last week by a broad coalition of international free expression and press freedom groups.
The report builds on mission participants’ finding that escalating pressure on media in the period between parliamentary elections in June and repeat polls set for Sunday has significantly impacted journalists’ ability to report on matters of public interest and is likely to “have a significant, negative impact on the ability of voters in Turkey to share and receive necessary information, with a corresponding effect on Turkey’s democracy”.
It does so through 10 brief chapters by mission participants that set forth details on main areas of concern that the participants identified in a joint declaration last week following the close of the mission. The report also contains an evaluation of the degree to which authorities in Turkey have heeded recommendations that IPI set forth six months ago in its report, “Democracy at Risk, IPI Special Report on Turkey, 2015”, concluding that authorities have largely failed to take necessary steps to remedy ongoing threats to media freedom.
“Pressure on media has continued to increase following our mission and we remain extremely concerned about the deteriorating state of press freedom in Turkey and its impact both on the Nov. 1 elections and beyond,” IPI Director of Advocacy and Communications Steven M. Ellis said. “We again call for an immediate end to all efforts to hinder or prevent journalists from giving voters in Turkey the information they need to make an informed decision about their future.”
From Oct. 19 to 21, mission participants met in Istanbul and Ankara with journalists, political representatives and foreign diplomats to demonstrate solidarity with their colleagues in the news media in Turkey and to focus attention in Turkey and abroad on the impact the growing pressure on independent media is likely to have on the Nov. 1 election.
The unprecedented mission brought together representatives from eight leading international press freedom and free expression groups, including IPI, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), Article 19, Index on Censorship and the Ethical Journalism Network. Delegates were also joined by members of the Journalists Union of Turkey (TGS) and IPI’s National Committee in Turkey.
The full report can be read here.
18 Oct 15 | About Index, Campaigns, Mapping Media Freedom, Press Releases, Statements, Turkey, Turkey Statements
Concern over the deteriorating state of press freedom in Turkey and its impact on upcoming Nov. 1 parliamentary elections have prompted a coalition of international free expression groups to undertake an emergency press freedom mission to the country, the International Press Institute (IPI) announced.
From Oct. 19 to 21, mission participants will meet in Istanbul and Ankara with journalists, political representatives and foreign diplomats to demonstrate solidarity with their colleagues in the news media and to focus attention in Turkey and abroad on the impact the growing pressure on independent media is likely to have on the election.
The unprecedented mission will bring together representatives from eight leading international press freedom and free expression groups, including IPI, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the European Federation of Journalists, Article 19, Index on Censorship and the Ethical Journalism Network.
The mission will conclude with a press conference at 13:00 on Oct. 21 at the offices of the Journalists Association of Turkey (TGC), at Türkocağı Cad. No: 1, Cağaloğlu, Istanbul.
Since late August, when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called a repeat of June elections after lawmakers were unable to form a government, Turkey has witnessed a series of increasingly troubling incidents targeting journalists and media. Among others, they include physical attacks on journalists and media outlets; raids on media outlets and seizures of publications; threatening rhetoric directed at journalists; and the increasing use of criminal insult and anti-terrorism laws to chill independent reporting.
Next week’s mission will focus on these incidents, as well as the ongoing imprisonment of numerous journalists in Turkey and the deportations of foreign journalists, particularly those
attempting to cover deadly clashes with the outlawed Kurdistan’s Workers Party (PKK) and Turkey’s participation in the international fight against the Islamic State group.
The mission comes as satellite and online television providers have accepted prosecutors’ demands to stop carrying the signals of broadcasters critical of the government.
“The upcoming election is likely to decide Turkey’s direction for the coming decade and its outcome will have far-reaching implications for Turkey, its neighbours, the West and the wider world,” IPI Executive Director Barbara Trionfi said. “IPI and its partners are undertaking this emergency press freedom mission to Turkey to stand in solidarity with our colleagues under pressure, and to demand that voters be allowed to make an informed decision about their future and that the media be allowed to report freely to give voters the information they need to do so.”
The deterioration of press freedom in Turkey represents the culmination of a years-long trend documented earlier this year in an IPI Special Report on the country, “Democracy at Risk” (also available in Turkish).
For more information about the Oct. 21 Press Conference at 13:00, please contact the Journalists Association of Turkey (TGC) by telephone at +90 (0 212) 513 83 00 or via email at [email protected].
