After a break of two years, Turkey once again has become “world’s biggest journalist-prison” and ranked low in press freedom and transparency on international indices.
The State of Emergency (OHAL) declared following the coup attempt on July 15, and the Statutory Decrees (KHK) issued within the State of Emergency have brought various unlawful and excessive practices like closures, detentions and arrests among members of the Gülen Community and the Kurdish Media.
The Government has often been criticized for “becoming distant from its goals of democracy” and “using the State of Emergency to speed up its ideological transformation process within the state-structure” at national and international levels.
Video report via Woochit News:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iWrWUhPMx4
BİA Media Monitoring Report 2016 July-August-September points out to the diversity and vastness of
administrative and judicial interventions on the media in the third quarter of the year; 226 journalists face the risk of a life imprisonment and 2,235 years and 4 months in prison.
The report also demonstrates that 107 journalists and 10 distributors have entered October 2016 in prison, 78 journalists in custody and that 775 press cards and 49 passports have been revoked in the State of Emergency.
In these three months, action has been taken against 22 journalists for “defaming the President” or “defaming Recep Tayyip Erdoğan”. In accordance with Article 229 of the Turkish Penal Code (Defaming the President), two of these have been sentenced to a punitive fine of 3,130 euro each.
The report also demonstrates that in comparison to the last quarter, the number of the arrested journalists has risen from 24 to 106 the detentions from 49 to 78 and the unemployed from 45 to 2,500.
