New York, March 21, 2014–Turkey banned access to the social media platform Twitter on Friday, hours after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan threatened in a public speech to shut it down, according to news reports. The move comes just ahead of March 30 elections and follows Erdoğan’s threats to ban Facebook and YouTube.
New York, March 20, 2014–The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s threats today to close down Twitter. The threats come only days after he vowed to shut down Facebook and YouTube in Turkey.
New York, March 11, 2014–The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release this week of five Turkish journalists who were imprisoned after being sentenced to jail in connection with the controversial Ergenekon case. Three of the journalists–Yalçın Küçük, Deniz Yıldırım, and Merdan Yanardağ–were convicted because of their work, according to CPJ research. In the cases…
New York, March 7, 2014–The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s threats to shut down YouTube and Facebook in order to, in the premier’s words, prevent the negative impact of the Internet on society.
For the second year in a row, Turkey was the world’s leading jailer of the press, with 40 journalists behind bars, according to CPJ’s annual prison census. Authorities continued to harass and censor critical voices, firing and forcing the resignation of almost 60 reporters in connection with their coverage of anti-government protests in Gezi Park…
Risk List underlines mass surveillance, fatalities, and censorship New York, February 6, 2014–Mass surveillance programs by the U.S. and U.K., as well as restrictive Internet legislation by various governments and a wave of cyberattacks globally, are among the disturbing developments that have landed cyberspace on the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Risk List, released today.
San Francisco, February 6, 2014–The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Turkish President Abdullah Gül to veto the Internet bill passed Wednesday by the Turkish Parliament. The bill would grant the Turkish government unprecedented control over the Internet by allowing Web pages to be blocked without a court order, requiring mandatory data retention by Internet…