Turkey / Europe & Central Asia

  
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announces a mayoral candidate as his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) choice on January 7, 2024.

CPJ welcomes Turkish court’s annulment of law that allowed takedown of online news

Istanbul, January 11, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the decision by Turkey’s Constitutional Court to annul a legal clause that allowed local courts to remove online news. “We are pleased that Turkey’s highest court found unconstitutional the legal article that had been used to take down online news with public value under the guise…

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Turkish editor Furkan Karabay arrested for reporting on corruption trial of judiciary members

Istanbul, January 2, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists urges Turkish authorities to immediately release journalist Furkan Karabay and to stop criminalizing reporting on the judiciary.   Istanbul police took Karabay, an editor for independent news website Gerçek Gündem (The Real Agenda), into custody on December 28, 2023 according to news reports. The next day, he…

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A man in a crowd holds up a placard with a photograph of slain journalist Hrant Dink at a demonstration to mark the 16th anniversary of his murder in Istanbul, Turkey, on January 19, 2023.

Killer of journalist Hrant Dink freed in Turkey amid widespread criticism

Istanbul, November 17, 2023—The Committee to Protect Journalists urges Turkish authorities to heed the calls by the family of murdered Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink for full justice, following the release of his killer from prison. In 2007, 17-year-old Ogün Samast assassinated Dink, the prominent managing editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, outside his newspaper’s…

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In Turkey, 3 journalists detained for ‘disinformation,’ 1 jailed, 3 others under investigation

Istanbul, November 2, 2023—The Committee to Protect Journalists urged Turkish authorities on Thursday to immediately release journalists Tolga Şardan and Cengiz Erdinç, drop “disinformation” charges against them, and overturn an order for editor Dinçer Gökçe to read and summarize books about his profession. In two separate cases on Wednesday, police in the Turkish capital of…

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Faces of impunity across the world

CPJ’s 2023 Global Impunity Index lists the top 12 countries where the murderers of journalists go free. But impunity knows no borders. The mosaic below shows the faces of slain journalists around the world. Beneath each journalist’s photo is the location of their death. Click the images for more details about these unsolved cases. (Photo grid by Geoff McGhee)

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Press freedom activists hold a candlelight vigil in front of the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, D.C. to mark the first anniversary of the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (Reuters/Sarah Silbiger)

Mahoney: Biden’s Saudi policy stymies quest for Khashoggi justice

From pariah to potential partner. That’s how far Saudi Arabia has come for President Joe Biden in the five years since Riyadh sent a death squad to butcher journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The administration’s ongoing rehabilitation of the petrodollar kingdom and its de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, widely known as MBS, seems to…

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CPJ joins call for Turkey to ensure safety of threatened journalist Alican Uludağ

The Committee to Protect Journalists joined five press freedom groups on Friday in a joint statement calling on the authorities in Turkey to ensure that journalist Alican Uludağ is safe, as he has been receiving online threats since he was publicly targeted by two politicians from the government-allied Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) because of his…

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Tipping the scales: Journalists’ lawyers face retaliation around the globe

The smears began the day Christian Ulate began representing jailed Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora: tweets accusing the lawyer of being a leftist or questioning his legal credentials. He began to fear he was being surveilled.  Ulate had taken over the case in August 2022 from two other lawyers, Romeo Montoya García and Mario Castañeda,…

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Turkey indicts 2 Kurdish journalists on terrorism charges

Istanbul, October 5, 2023—The Committee to Protect Journalists urged Turkish authorities on Thursday to immediately release journalists Dicle Müftüoğlu and Sedat Yılmaz, who have been held in pretrial detention for more than five months, and to stop using terrorism legislation to criminalize journalists. Müftüoğlu and Yılmaz, both editors at the pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya News Agency, were…

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Headshot of Turkish journalist İsmail Arı

Turkey urged to act on death threats against journalist İsmail Arı

Istanbul, September 29, 2023—The Committee to Protect Journalist calls on Turkish authorities to respond to reporter İsmail Arı’s criminal complaints regarding the online threats he has been receiving. “Turkish authorities should stop turning a blind eye to reporter İsmail Arı’s criminal complaints about the online threats he is facing and take them seriously,” said Özgür…

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