2017

Detention of Die Welt Turkey correspondent complicates relations with Germany The detention of Deniz Yücel, Turkey correspondent for the German newspaper Die Welt, has complicated relations with German officials, the socialist daily Evrensel, the German news website Handelsbatt Global, and the pro-Turkish-government Daily Sabah reported. According to a February 21 Handelsbatt Global report, German Chancellor…

Publisher closes magazine for cartoon lampooning Moses The publisher of the cartoon magazine GırGır announced today that he was closing down the magazine after its publication of a cartoon depicting Moses irritating his followers wandering in the desert by talking too much and bragging about parting the Red Sea sparked outrage on social media, including…

German court upholds partial ban on poem satirizing Erdoğan A court in the German city of Hamburg today upheld a previous court’s ban on comedian Jan Böhmermann’s reciting 18 of 24 verses of a poem satirizing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that the comedian recited on television last year, according to press reports. Erdoğan pressed…

Columnist investigated for referendum comments Prosecutors in Istanbul opened an investigation into Bekir Coşkun, a columnist for the pro-opposition daily newspaper Sözcü, regarding remarks he made in a column about a coming referendum on whether the constitution should be amended to increase the president’s powers, Dogan News Agency reported.

Diaspora news website censored before publishing The bilingual German-Turkish news website Özgürüz (“We Are Free”), which is edited by exiled Cumhuriyet editor Can Dündar, reported that Turkish authorities had blocked access to the website 12 hours before it published its first story today. The website said it believed ozguruz.org made censorship history as the first…

When officials in Baku released several high-profile journalists, including investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova, from prison in May last year, the international media rights community breathed a sigh of relief. But any optimism was short-lived, with authorities in recent months prosecuting journalists and bloggers, and passing restrictive online media laws.

Newspaper distributor says security officers abducted, beat him Barış Boyraz, a former distributor for the shuttered Kurdish-language daily Azadiya Welat, told the daily newspaper Evrensel that men he believes to be plainclothes police on December 17, 2016, abducted him from the streets of Ankara and beat him.

British journalists say the future of independent and investigative journalism in the U.K. is at stake, as a deadline for public consultation on press regulation ends tomorrow. If it is implemented, Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 would leave news outlets not signed up to an official press regulator liable for the…

Erdoğan praises Trump for ‘beating down’ CNN reporter Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan praised U.S. President-elect Donald Trump for “beating down” (“benzetmek”) CNN senior White House correspondent Jim Costa in a January 11 press conference, according to media reports and video widely distributed on the internet. Trump refused to take a question from CNN at…