Turkish journalist Mahmut Altıntaş detained, says police beat him
Istanbul, February 1, 2024 – Turkish authorities must stop the country’s security forces from harassing the press and investigate accusations by Mahmut Altıntaş, a reporter for the pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya News Agency, that police beat him in detention, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday. Police in the eastern province of Adıyaman took Altıntaş into custody…
Turkish journalist Sinan Aygül convicted for ‘insulting’ men who beat him; attackers get suspended sentences
Istanbul, January 25, 2024 – The Committee to Protect Journalists on Thursday called on Turkish authorities to ensure justice in the case of journalist Sinan Aygül, who was hospitalized by an assault last year. The 1st Tatvan Court of First Instance in the eastern province of Bitlis found Aygül, chief editor of the privately owned…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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)
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…
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…
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,…