2012

3. The Anti-State Prosecutions Journalist Ahmet Şık found himself behind bars for writing a book that was not even published. So explosive was the subject of The Imam’s Army that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan likened it to a bomb. Şık was probing too far into one of the most influential and underreported forces in…

4. The Kurdish Cases The indictments of staffers of the Dicle News Agency are filled with the workaday details of a wire-service journalist: An editor fields tips about pro-Kurdish demonstrations; a reporter covers the story of a youth who set himself on fire as a political protest; another tries to track down a possible police…

Sidebar: Letters From Prison Here are excerpts from letters written by four journalists who have been imprisoned in Turkey. They were first published by the independent online news portal Bianet in January and February 2012. As in dozens of other cases, prosecutors have charged these individuals with grave anti-state crimes. These first-person accounts provide a…

5. Test of Political Will On March 25, 2012, the day before the Nuclear Security Summit got under way in Seoul, South Korea, U.S. President Barack Obama met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to discuss a world of troubles. On the agenda were efforts to compel Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step aside,…

Sidebar: Online Censors Sharpen Tactics By Danny O’Brien As Deniz Ergürel and his Media Association colleagues prepared for a meeting with President Abdullah Gül in June 2011, they searched for a damning example of how illogical Turkey’s Internet censorship had become. They didn’t have to look far. In an attempt to enforce a sitewide ban…

6. Recommendations CPJ offers the following recommendations to Turkish authorities and the international community.

Appendix I: Journalists in Prison CPJ research identified 76 journalists imprisoned in Turkey as of August 1, 2012. After examining the government’s evidence, reviewing other public records, and speaking with defense lawyers involved in the cases, CPJ concluded that at least 61 detainees were being held in direct relation to their journalism.

Appendix II: Government Responses CPJ sought comment for this report from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin. The requests, made in writing by CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova, elicited responses from Justice Minister Ergin and Namık Tan, Turkish ambassador to the United States. The prime minister did…

Podcast With CPJ’s Nina Ognianova CPJ’s Nina Ognianova describes the widespread criminal prosecution and jailing of journalists in Turkey. A vast and repressive legal structure, combined with a harshly adversarial tone set at the highest levels of government, have created a crisis, says Ognianova, lead author of a new CPJ special report. Listen to the…