Özgür Öğret/CPJ Turkey Representative
Özgür Öğret is a Turkish freelance journalist and CPJ’s Turkey representative. He was lead researcher for the 2012 CPJ special report, "Turkey's Press Freedom Crisis."
CPJ joins call for Turkey to release journalist Sedef Kabaş
On February 1, 2022, the Committee to Protect Journalists joined the International Press Institute and 25 other international groups in a joint letter calling for Turkish authorities to release journalist Sedef Kabaş immediately. Authorities detained Kabaş, a freelance journalist and former television anchor, on January 22 for “insulting” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during an appearance…
Turkey’s government sends a bleak message on press freedom
CPJ’s recent press freedom mission in Turkey got off to a disappointing start. International organizations led by the International Press Institute, and including Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, and Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa, a think tank focused on seven European countries, gathered in Ankara and Istanbul to discuss our concerns about possible updates to…
To finally solve the Hrant Dink murder, Turkey must ‘face itself’
After nearly 14 years and multiple court cases, the 2007 murder of Hrant Dink, a Turkish journalist of Armenian origin, remains largely unsolved even as the extended main trial appears to be set to draw to a close. Dink’s teenage killer and his immediate accomplices are behind bars, but prosecutors in the retrial, ordered by Turkey’s supreme court in 2013, have yet…
CPJ, partners warn of Turkey’s compromised institutions in press freedom mission
Turkey’s press freedom situation is continuing to deteriorate as judicial independence shrinks and the government’s grasp on the internet tightens, a delegation featuring the Committee to Protect Journalists and 10 other international press freedom and human rights organizations said in a statement and a press conference today. From October 6-9, 2020, the delegation met with…
For Turkish journalists, fear of contracting COVID-19 competes with fear of arrest
Journalist Evrim Kepenek works in Istanbul as the women and LGBTI+ news editor for the independent news website Bianet. Like most people, she works from home these days, but she is also a street reporter who recently observed twin fears among the Turkish public: getting infected with COVID-19 and getting arrested for talking about it.
CPJ joins calls on Turkey to lift ad ban on Evrensel daily
CPJ joined the International Press Institute, Reporters Without Borders, the Journalists Union of Turkey, the European Federation of Journalists, and 20 other Turkish and international groups in a joint letter today calling for Turkey’s Press Ad Agency, the state regulator of government advertisements in print media, to lift its ban on advertising in critical leftist…
‘The goal is to make us stop writing’: Turkish journalists on attacks and threats
Eight months after he was attacked outside his Ankara home with baseball bats, Yavuz Selim Demirağ still has trouble sleeping. “The worry of suffering another attack at any minute messed with my psychology. Sometimes I feel like I am being followed,” the Turkish journalist said. “In the end, the threat continues. Because the attackers are…
CPJ joins call for Turkish authorities to lift advertising ban on leftist dailies
CPJ joined representatives from the International Press Institute, Reporters Without Borders, the Journalists Union of Turkey, and the European Federation of Journalists yesterday in a joint statement calling for Turkey’s Press Ad Agency, the state regulator of government ads in print media, to lift its ban on advertising in critical leftist dailies Evrensel and BirGün.
‘I could be jailed at any moment’: Turkish editor in limbo over terms of prison release
If somebody is legally under house arrest but in practice not, are they free? Semiha Şahin, an editor at the socialist Etkin News Agency (ETHA), confronts this question—and the legal ambiguity that it poses—every day. A Turkish court released the journalist under house arrest in June, pending the outcome of her trial, but authorities have…
Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of June 23, 2019
‘Insult’ trial for Free Journalists Initiative spokesperson Hakkı Boltan, a spokesperson for the Free Journalists Initiative (ÖGİ), is due to stand trial in Diyarbakır on charges of “insulting the president” and “insulting a public servant because of their duty,” the news website Gazete Karınca reported. The charges are related to Boltan’s public statements about President…