Turkey

We've launched a new section of our Web site, and we hope you take a few minutes to read some of its pages. There is one, for example, on Russian reporter Natalya Estemirova, who dared to examine human rights crimes in Chechnya. Another is devoted to Francisco Javier Ortiz Franco, a Tijuana newspaper editor who exposed the workings of the Arellano Félix drug cartel. They are among the 758 journalists killed for their work since 1992. Our new database memorializes these women and men, most of whom were local reporters, photographers, producers, and editors who confronted the powerful or took unpopular positions.

Journalists came under fire in their car on August 10 near Tskhinvali. According to the Turkish Daily News, Turkish journalist Recep Öztürk was wounded. It is not clear who was shooting at them--the lines have been fluid as the Georgians and Russians battle in South Ossetia. At least three journalists have been killed and 10 injured since fighting began last week.

Iraqi Kurdish political leaders have cultivated an image of freedom and tolerance, but that increasingly clashes with reality. As the independent press has grown more assertive, attacks and arrests have increased.

The murder of an outspoken newspaper editor underlined a troubling year in which journalists continued to be the targets of criminal prosecution and government censorship.

Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian editor of the bilingual weekly Agos, was gunned down outside his newspaper’s Istanbul office on January 19. Dink had received numerous death threats from nationalist Turks who viewed his iconoclastic journalism, particularly on the mass killings of Armenians in the early 20th century, as an act of treachery. In a January 10 article in Agos, Dink said he had passed along a particularly threatening letter to Istanbul’s Sisli district prosecutor, but no action had been taken. Dink’s murder rekindled memories of the not-too-distant past, when murders of journalists were common in Turkey. In the 1990s, 18 Turkish journalists were killed for their work, many of them murdered, making it the eighth-deadliest country in the world for the press. Few of the cases were solved.

A wave of criminal prosecutions against the press reignited doubts about Turkey’s commitment to Western-style democracy and a free press just one year after the nation began formal talks for European Union membership. Journalists and writers found themselves the repeated targets of criminal lawsuits initiated under vaguely worded, restrictive statutes that remained on the books despite recent legislative reforms. Those who tackled controversial topics such as the country’s ethnic Kurds, criticism of the military and the courts, the mass killing of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, or criticism of the country’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, were the primary victims.

New York, January 19, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the murder today of a prominent Turkish-Armenian editor outside his newspaper’s offices in Istanbul. Hrant Dink, 52, managing editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, was shot three times in the neck, according to the Turkish television channel NTV.

By Mathew Hansen

Hundreds of journalists have been killed over 15 years, many on the orders of government officials. Few cases are ever solved. In the Fall/Winter 2006 edition of Dangerous Assignments

New York, July 12, 2006— The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the ruling yesterday by Turkey’s High Court of Appeals to uphold the six-month suspended prison sentence of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Dink, managing editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, had appealed a conviction last October under Article 301 of the penal code, which forbids denigrating Turkish identity and state institutions.