August 9, 2002, New York—A court in the Turkish breakaway region of northern Cyprus yesterday sentenced two editors from the opposition daily Afrika to six months in prison for criticizing a Turkish Cypriot leader, according to international press reports and CPJ sources. On Thursday, August 8, Afrika editor-in-chief Sener Levent and editor Memduh Ener were…
The exhilarating prospect of broad press freedoms that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago has faded dramatically in much of the post-communist world. A considerable decline in press freedom conditions in Russia during the last year, along with the stranglehold authoritarian leaders have imposed on media in Central Asia, the Caucasus,…
Some 35,000 Turkish troops are stationed in the self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which only Turkey recognizes as legitimate. The island remains divided into a more prosperous ethnic Greek sector in the south and an isolated and impoverished ethnic Turkish sector in the north. Cyprus’ capital, Nicosia, sits in the middle of the island…
New York, May 31, 2001 — The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) today condemned last week’s bomb attack against the printing facility of an opposition daily newspaper in northern Cyprus. On May 24, a bomb blast ripped through the printing office of the daily Avrupa, causing significant damage. Agence France-Presse, citing eyewitnesses, said unidentified assailants…