The new Turkey
No justice in Turkey

16-Jan-2020

Reporters without borders writes the following about the situation
for journalists in Turkey in it's 2019 report on page 16:

Although the number of detained journalists fell for the second year running, Turkey continues to be one of the world’s biggest jailers of media personnel and continues to expose them to an entirely arbitrary justice system.

No judicial decision seems to hold for long. Little more than a week after his conditional release in November, the well-known journalist Ahmet Altan was back in prison again because prosecutors appealed against the decision. Six Cumhuriyet newspaper journalists – Musa Kart, Güray Öz, Hakan Kara, Önder Çelik, Ahmet Şık and Mustafa Kemal Güngör – were freed conditionally in September only to learn two months later that an Istanbul court had convicted them again at the end of a retrial. Of the six other Cumhuriyet journalists to be prosecuted, only one, Kadri Gürsel, was acquitted. The others could be returned to prison if their convictions are upheld on appeal.

Similarly, after initially being acquitted in July, RSF Turkey representative Erol Önderoğlu, human rights defender Şebnem Korur Fincancı and the writer and publisher Ahmet Nesin learned that prosecutors have appealed against their acquittal in order to have a second go at convicting them for participating in a solidarity campaign with the Kurdish newspaper Özgür Gündem.

Dozens of journalists and media representatives were released over the course of the year after completing their prison sentences or as a result of a new court ruling, but around ten others opted for self-imposed exile in order to avoid an arbitrary trial.

The risk of prosecution has increased because, as well as the usual charges of “terrorist propaganda,” “collaborating with an illegal organization” and “membership of an illegal organization,” journalists can now also be charged with “insulting the president.” This happened to Ozan Kaplanoğlu, a journalist in the city of Bursa and local representative of the Association of Progressive Journalists (CGD).

In addition to the cases included in RSF’s tally, dozens of other media representatives are currently in prison and being prosecuted on a charge of “affiliation to illegal or terrorist political groups."