Rights Groups Slam Turkey over 20 Jailed Journalists
Twenty journalists are behind bars in Turkey on mainly terrorism-related charges, media rights groups said Wednesday, lashing out at increased state pressure on reporters ahead of the November 1 election.
"Many journalists are in prison for simply doing their jobs, which is reporting to the public," Barbara Trionfi, executive director of the International Press Institute, said after a three-day "emergency mission" to Turkey.
A coalition of international press rights groups said in a statement that the mission was prompted by "concerns over the deteriorating state of media freedoms in the country and its impact on the elections."
At a press conference in Istanbul, coalition representatives said some journalists had been in pre-trial detention for months, while others had been sentenced for links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
There have been growing concerns about press freedoms under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he presses a military offensive against the PKK and the country prepares for its second general election in five months.
International journalists have been arrested and deported, while one of Turkey's best known anti-government journalists was attacked this month and a "terror propaganda" probe opened into the paper he works for.
Dutch journalist Frederike Geerdink was deported in September after being detained during clashes between Kurdish rebels and Turkish security forces.
Erdogan sparked outrage in the run-up to the June 7 election by saying the editor-in-chief of the secular Cumhuriyet daily would "pay a heavy price" over a front-page story which it said proved Turkey had sent arms to Syrian rebels.
The coalition urged Erdogan "to end all exercises of direct personal pressure on owners and/or chief editors of critical media and to stop using negative or hostile rhetoric targeting journalists."
Turkey is also now requiring all national and international journalists be accredited in order to cover the November vote.
The country was the world's top jailer of journalists in 2012 and 2013, ahead of Iran and China, according to the international Committee to Protect Journalists, before improving to 10th place in 2014.
Erdogan has previously insisted his country has "the freest press in the world".
But Reporters Without Borders ranked Turkey 149th out of 180 in its 2015 press freedom index last month, warning of a "dangerous surge in censorship."
Source: Agence France Presse
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