Press Freedom in Turkey

The Turkish daily newspaper Gnlk has been banned for one month because of articles and news items written by Professor Amir Hassanpour of Toronto University.

The Istanbul 13th High Criminal Court took this decision on the grounds of article 7/2 in the Anti-Terrorism Law, claiming that Hassanpour's articles contain organizational propaganda.

In a written statement, Gnlk's chief editor Filiz Koçali criticized the decision: We cannot talk about a democratic opening if we cannot make the Kurdish people talk.

Koçali continues: The reason for the ban is an article written by the internationally renowned professor Hassanpour, who has published articles in international journals and newspapers. With this decision Turkey applies censorship to an internationally well-known linguist.

The Democratic Society Party (DTP) also condemned the decision, emphasizing that the government has to ease the pressure on freedom of expression in order to proceed on the way to finding a solution to the Kurdish question. Therefore they ask for an amendment of the restrictive regulations in the Turkish Criminal Code (TCK) and in the Anti-Terrorism Law.

Gnlk newspaper has been publishing since January this year and was handed a two-month ban in June for spreading PKK propaganda in two issues of the paper.

In his article titled Linguistic rights in the linguistics system of the developed world: State, market and communication technologies Hassanpour deals with the pressure on the Kurdish language in Turkey.

The European Court of Human Rights has ordered Turkey to pay a total of over 40,000 Euros to 20 Turkish journalists as compensation for having violated their rights.

In two separate cases, the Court ruled on 26 January that Turkey had violated freedom of speech laws when it suspended five newspapers and sentenced a magazine editor to prison over an article criticizing prison brutality.

Welcoming the judgment, IPI Board Member Ferai Tinc, Chairperson of the IPI Turkish National Committee, said: We would like that the law that allows [such press freedom violations] be abolished. We would like the canceling of prison sentences in cases concerning the media. No one can be imprisoned for what he has written.

In the first case, the five newspapers concerned are Gndem, Yedinci Gn, Haftaya Bak, Yaamda Demokrasi and Gerçek Demokrasi. Between 9 October and 15 December 2007, an Istanbul court ordered the suspension of all five newspapers for periods ranging from fifteen days to a month for violating the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The Court stated that various articles in the newspapers supported the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an organisation that is considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey and much of the international community, including the European Union and the United States.

The second case was in connection with two articles published in February 2001 by the Turkish magazine Yeni Dnya çin Çaðr. The articles reportedly criticized a security operation in Turkish prisons which left 30 inmates dead. A graphic cover photo showed prisoners who had been burned or beaten.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled in both cases that Turkey had violated Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights because the practice of banning the future publication of entire periodicals went beyond any necessary restraint and amounted to censorship.

IPI welcomes the judgment by the European Court of Human Rights, said IPI Director David Dadge. Particularly since Turkey is engaged in accession talks with the European Union, it is important that it abides by democratic standards of freedom of expression and the media.

In March 2009, IPI took its concerns about press freedom in Turkey to the European Commission in Brussels. It appealed to European Commission leaders to make press freedom a priority in ongoing membership talks with Turkey amid concern over verbal attacks on news organisations and continued legal hurdles to free expression in the country.

Turkey was criticised for media censorship by the European Court of Human Rights, in a case concerning the suspension of weekly newspapers for spreading terrorist propaganda.

In January 2008, Turkish authorities suspended two newspapers, Yedinci Gun and Toplumsal Demokrasi, for a month for violating anti-terrorism laws.

They were accused of spreading extremist propaganda promoting the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a separatist group seeking Kurdish independence.

Twelve people -- including owners, executive directors, editors-in-chief, news directors and journalists -- were criminally prosecuted and the proceedings in their cases are still pending.

The court concluded that the aim was to prevent the publication of similar articles in the future, thus hindering the professional activities of the 12 applicants.

Less draconian measures could have been envisaged, such as the confiscation of particular issues of the newspapers or the restriction on the publication of specific articles, the ruling said: The domestic courts had unjustifiably restricted the essential role of the press as a public watchdog in a democratic society, it added.

The 12 applicants were awarded 1,800 euros (2,200 dollars) in damages.