CPJ calls on Turkey’s presidential candidates to prioritize press freedom

Gulnoza Said
Election posters for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, left, and Turkey's main pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party, in Istanbul in June. CPJ joins other organizations in calling on presidential candidates to address press freedom issues. (Reuters/Huseyin Aldemir)

Election posters for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, left, and Turkey's main pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party, in Istanbul in June. CPJ joins other organizations in calling on presidential candidates to address press freedom issues. (Reuters/Huseyin Aldemir)

Ahead of June 24 presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey, the Committee to Protect Journalists today joined 18 other international press freedom and freedom of expression organizations in calling on to the future leader of Turkey to prioritize press freedom and safety of journalists in the country.

Turkey is the world’s leading jailer of journalists, with at least 73 in jail in direct retaliation for their work when CPJ conducted its most recent prison census on December 1, 2017.

The joint letter, led by European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, calls on presidential candidates, including the incumbent, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to drop charges against all journalists and to release those in prison, and to protect and strengthen press freedom and independent journalism by restoring impartiality of the judiciary and ending the state control of media.

To read the letter, click here.

Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, is a journalist and press freedom advocate with over 20 years of experience in New York, Prague, Bratislava, and Tashkent. At CPJ, she has conducted several missions to countries in Europe and Central Asia, and advocated for greater press freedom and the release of jailed journalists at forums including the U.S. Congress, the United Nations, and the OSCE. Before joining CPJ in 2016, she was a journalist and covered issues including elections, politics, media, religion, and human rights with a focus on Central Asia, Russia, and Turkey. She also worked in communications for the United Nations Secretariat and the UNDP. Her op-eds, reports, and comments have appeared in CNN, the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, PBS, NBC, Voice of America, RFE/RL, Fergana, Eurasianet, and other outlets, and she authored the Uzbekistan chapter in a book on the study of social entrepreneurship. Follow her on LinkedIn.

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