Turkey Archives - Page 2 of 5

Turkey’s Planned Internet Law to Criminalise ‘Spreading Misinformation’

Posted on May 27, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

A new set of laws, which includes 40 articles, was represented to Turkey’s parliament on Thursday, aiming to increase government control over the internet, media and social media.

The law was prepared by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP and its far-right partner, the Nationalist Movement Party, MHP.

The new law, which is expected to pass soon, for the first time defines the crime of “spreading misinformation on purpose”.

It criminalises “a person who publicly disseminates false information regarding internal and external security, public order and the general health of the country, in a way that is suitable for disturbing the public peace, simply for the purpose of creating anxiety, fear or panic among the people”, the draft law explains.

According to the proposed law, persons who spread misinformation may be jailed for one to three years. If the court decides that the person spread misinformation as part of an illegal organisation, the jail sentence will be increased by 50 per cent.

Journalists may also be charged under this new law if they use anonymous sources for hiding the identity of the person who spreads the misinformation.

The draft law was condemned by experts and journalists’ unions.

Journalists unions in a written statement on Friday, including the Journalists’ Union of Turkey, TGS, the Journalists’ Association and the International Press Institute’s Turkey Committee, said that, “concerned that it may lead to one of the most severe censorship and self-censorship mechanisms in the history of the republic, we call for the immediate withdrawal of this bill, which seems to have been designed to increase the pressure on journalism, not ‘fight against disinformation”.

The new law also allows internet media to register as periodical media publications. This will allow internet media to enjoy some of the benefits of traditional media, such as advertising and press cards, but brings more government control.

Internet media will be required to remove “false” content and must archive their publications, and the government may block access to their websites more easily.

“On the request of the ministries, the President [of the Information and Communication Technologies Authority] may decide to remove the content and/or block access to be fulfilled within four hours regarding broadcasts on the internet,” the new law said, citing national security and public order.

It also creates new regulations on official press cards, after Turkey’s Council of State, the highest administrative legal authority in the country, cancelled the previous law in April, 2021, citing risks to press freedom.

The regulations created by the Communications Directorate, which is under the control of the presidency, allowed the government to cancel the press cards of journalists seen as unfriendly to the authorities, critics claimed.

Since they were introduced, a large number of independent journalists have had their press cards cancelled or their applications for renewal denied.

However, the new law brings little change, beyond creating a new board to decide on press cards. The Press Card Commission will have nine members, which will include government officials, academics and journalists’ unions but five members will come from the Communications Directorate, holding a decision-making majority.

Opposition Leader Slams Erdogan for Sending Khashoggi Case to Saudis

Posted on April 21, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Turkey’s main opposition leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, has condemned a Turkish court ruling approved by the Turkish Justice Ministry which handed the Jamal Khashoggi murder case over to Saudi Arabia.

Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi agents inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 when he visited the consulate to arrange his marriage papers.

Kilicdaroglu accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of putting “a price on our honour”.

“No matter what you believe, you cannot put a price on Jamal Khashoggi, who was the victim of a terrible murder on your land,” Kilicdaroglu, the president of social-democratic Republican People’s Party, CHP said in a video message on Twitter late Wednesday.

Kilicdaroglu said the decision was immoral.

“Morality is the state’s foundation. Those who buried Turkey’s honour in the Saudi Embassy’s garden shook the foundation of the state,” he added.

On Wednesday, the appeal against the decision to transfer the case, brought by Khashoggi’s fiancée Hatice Cengiz, was rejected by Ankara’s 14th Administrative Court.

“The Republic of Turkey cannot give up its sovereign rights in such a way,” Gokmen Baspinar, a lawyer for Cengiz, had urged in the appeal.

According to the T24 website, which has seen court documents, Turkey handed over the Khashoggi case to Saudi Arabia out of “international courtesy”.

The decision came at a time when Turkey wants to repair relations with Saudi Arabia. Erdogan will visit Saudi Arabia during Eid-Al-Fitr on May 2.

According to some observers, Saudi Arabia’s precondition for this improvement in ties was the transfer of the Khashoggi case.

With the Turkish Justice Ministry’s approval, a court in Istanbul on April 7 ruled that the case should be transferred to Saudi Arabia.

In 2019, a Saudi court sentenced five men to death and three others to various prison terms for Khashoggi’s murder but the death sentences were later changed to prison terms after Khashoggi’s son pardoned his father’s murderers.

Since the murder and an international outcry, Saudi authorities have claimed that Khashoggi was killed by a rogue execution team without the knowledge of top Saudi officials – a claim dismissed by experts and human rights organisations.

Turkey’s decision to send the case to Saudi Arabia shocked human rights defenders who said this would end all hope of justice.

Turkey Threatens to Jail Journalists Reporting Critically on Companies

Posted on March 28, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP, has submitted a new bill to parliament criminalizing critical news reports about companies.

According to the proposed law, journalists may be jailed for up to three years as well as face fines for having “deliberately created a report that could damage the reputation, trust and wealth of the company through the media”.

“Turkey’s ranking in press freedom and freedom of expression indexes has been showing a steady decline for years. Unfortunately, with steps taken like the most recent preparation to penalise journalists’ work citing the alleged protection of commercial images, it will take yet another hit,” Gurkan Ozturan, Media Freedom Rapid Response Coordinator at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, ECPMF, told BIRN.

“Journalists and journalism cannot be punished [for such reports]; it is not a crime,” he added.

Ozturan said the bill proposes to stiffen the protection of commercial entities by empowering them to lead strategic lawsuits against public participation, often known as SLAPPs, which are used increasingly to silence and target journalists.

According to the proposed law, the law will be applicable even if the name of the relevant company is not mentioned in the news report.

If private or public harm is done to the company as a result of the news report, the penalty may be increased further by one-sixth.

“While in the European Union, which the Turkish government aspires to be part of, there are steps to create protection for media freedom and journalists against such acts, Turkey seems to be heading in the opposite direction,” Ozurtan said.

“Also, as part of the same bill, there is provisionally going to be a reduction in the punishment for tax evasion,” Ozturan noted, saying the proposed law does not seem compatible either with the rules of the free market or with the principles of media freedom.

Erdogan’s government has been accused before of favouring certain private companies by delivering them large public tenders, multibillion construction projects and tax reductions.

The opposition says the new draft law clearly aims to protect those companies.

Turkey was ranked in 153th place out of 180 countries in 2021 in the latest press freedom index of the watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders, RSF, which classifies the Turkish government’s control over media outlets as high.

According a recent report published by Association of Journalists, 241 journalists were put on trial and 115 physically attacked in Turkey in 2021.

Turkish Journalist Who Revealed Islamist NGO’s Murky Ties Faces Prison

Posted on March 22, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Metin Cihan, an independent investigative journalist faces three to six years in a Turkish prison over his investigation revealing the ties between the Turkish Youth Foundation, TUGVA, a political Islamist NGO, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government and family.

“The case was not a surprise. As we’ve got used to, they do not punish the people who commit crimes but the ones who reveal them,” Cihan told BIRN.

The prosecutors’ office in Istanbul has asked for a jail sentence of between three years and nine months and ten years and six months for Cihan and Ramazan Aydoglu, a former TUGVA member who allegedly shared documents with him.

The indictment said Aydogdu accessed the files of the foundation, thought to have been acquired from the TUGVA’s computers, “without consent or the right to do so”, and then sent these files to Cihan, manipulating and changing them.

Documents shared by Cihan, who is currently based in Germany, reveal that TUGVA, which has members of President Erdogan’s family on its board, used its influence with Erdogan to appoint its members to posts in the state, police and military.

Documents that BIRN has also seen also show that pro-government businesspeople, municipalities and governor offices finance TUGVA.

Cihan said that TUGVA wants to send a message with this court case.

“They want to show that they are still strong in the judiciary with this indictment. According to my information, the prosecutor was chosen for this case deliberately. Secondly, TUGVA administration received reactions from its own members after I revealed the documents. TUGVA then promised that the people who leaked and shared documents will be punished,” Cihan said.

According to Cihan, “This case is just the continuation and consequence of the illegality of the parallel state created by TUGVA within state institutions. In future, this case alone will be a topic for a legal investigation,” he said.

The leaked documents include the names of people affiliated with TUGVA, their phone and ID numbers, their university of graduation and the names of the ministries, police and army branches to which they would like to be appointed – plus the dates of their interviews and the names of their “references,” who are usually members of TUGVA, or Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP.

Another list also reveals that institutions closed and seized as part of a government crackdown on critics, accused of supporting the failed coup attempt in 2016, were handed over to TUGVA and five other Islamist NGOs with close ties to Erdogan’s party and government.

Thanks to generous government support, TUGVA has 37 student dormitories and more than 570 city and district offices in Turkey. The Islamist foundation organises events, conferences and projects with the aim of “raising a generation who stand for the right and for justice”.

If the indictment is accepted, Cihan and Aydogdu will stand trial before the İstanbul Criminal Court of First Instance.

Turkish Journalist Walks Free Despite Sentence for Insulting Erdogan

Posted on March 11, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

A Turkish court on Friday ordered the release of the well-known independent woman journalist Sedef Kabas who was sentenced to jail for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Kabas was released from prison at the first court hearing under a super-fast judgment after being sentenced to two years and four months in prison for insulting the President by reciting a famous proverb.

Kabas told the court, where the hearing was followed by rights groups, unions and opposition parties, that she will continue to express her opinions in public.

“I will continue to tell the truth despite the experiences the current leadership is making me and others go through,” Kabas said.

Police raided her home the morning after Kabas recited a proverb on a TV show and shared it on Twitter. She was sent to prison on January 22 and had been held there ever since.

“There is a very famous proverb that says a crowned head becomes wiser. But we see it is not true. A bull does not become king just by entering the palace; the palace becomes a barn,” she said on TELE 1 TV channel.

The Supreme Board of Radio and Television, RTUK, the state agency for monitoring, regulating and sanctioning radio and TV broadcasts, stopped five shows and the channel may have to hand over 8 per cent of its profit as an administrative fine.

According to official figures, by the end of 2020, more than 160,000 people had been investigated for alleged insults against President Erdogan and more than 38,000 people were tried in court for the same reason during Erdogan’s time as Prime Minister and then President since 2002. Turkey has come under international pressure to change the insult law.

Turkey Gives Foreign Media Short Deadline to Obtain Licence

Posted on February 9, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council, RTUK, the state agency that monitors and sanctions radio and television broadcasters, has given international media outlets operating in Turkey a 72-hour deadline to get a national licence.

If media outlets of Voice of America, VOA, Euronews and Deutsche Welle, DW, do not apply for a national licence, their websites will be blocked in Turkey, Ilhan Tasci, a board member at RTUK from the main opposition Republican People’s Party, warned on Wednesday.

“After the national media, the international media is next for monitoring and silencing. The real target is press freedom and plurivocality. They want a press that is silent and does not criticize,” Tasci said.

The RTUK has become a tool of Turkish President Erdogan’s autocratic government, experts say. Gurkan Ozturan, Media Freedom Rapid Response Coordinator at the European Centre for Press, told BIRN that RTUK applies disproportionate fines to independent media houses.

“Targeting national media institutions on the one hand and on the other international media institutions which have become prominent due to the poor news environment in the country raises the question of whether a new series of steps are being taken, targeting the right of society to receive information,” Ozturan said.

A recent report by independent media website Bianet on January 25 said Turkish state institutions for monitoring and regulating the media continue to target independent journalists and media houses, “in a mediascape where 90 per cent of national media outlets are controlled by the government”.

It noted that the remaining independent newspapers, including Evrensel, Sözcü, Cumhuriyet, Korkusuz, BirGun, Karar, Milli Gazette, Yenicag and Yeni Asya, were barred from carrying advertisements for public institutions in 2021, deliberately depriving them of revenue.

It also said RTUK had imposed fines on media outlets that aired critical or inquiring broadcasts, such as Fox TV, Halk TV, Tele1 and KRT. In total, broadcasters were fined 31,630,000 Turkish lira – more than 2 million euros – in 2021.

Turkey’s government increased its control on online media houses under a new law in 2019. Three years on, RTUK has decided to expand its control and monitoring of foreign media outlets, based on this law.

In a similar move, Russia banned Germany’s Deutsche Welle from operating in the country on February 4, also because of an alleged national licence issue.

Turkish Journalists Targeted by Prosecutions, Fines, Jail Terms: Report

Posted on January 25, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

A report published on Monday by Turkish independent media website Bianet said that in 2021, the Turkish government mobilised supposedly self-regulating and impartial institutions to “bring journalists and media outlets that are critical, investigative and inquiring to their knees”.

The BIA Media Monitor 2021 Report said that 35 journalists in Turkey were sentenced to a total of 92 years in prison in 2021.

Charges included “insulting the President”, “membership of an [illegal or terrorist] organisation”, “obtaining and disclosing confidential documents” or “espionage” under the Turkish Penal Code, or “propagandising for a terrorist organisation” under the country’s Anti-Terror Law.

Eight journalists in 2021, and 70 journalists in past five years, have been convicted of insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The report noted that Turkey has been the “world’s worst jailer of journalists” for years, and the government relied even more strongly on “judicial control” of the media in 2021.

State institutions for monitoring and regulating the media continued yo target independent journalists and media houses “in a mediascape where 90 per cent of national media outlets are controlled by the government”, the report said.

It noted that newspapers including Evrensel, Sözcü, Cumhuriyet, Korkusuz, BirGun, Karar, Milli Gazete, Yenicag and Yeni Asya were barred from carrying advertisements for public institutions in 2021, depriving them of revenue.

It also said that the Radio and Television Supreme Council, RTUK imposed fines on media outlets that aired critical or inquiring broadcasts such as Fox TV, Halk TV, Tele1 and KRT. In total, broadcasters were fined 31,630,000 Turkish lira – more than two million euros – in 2021.

According to the report, 56 journalists were physically attacked and 41 journalists were detained by police, mostly during their coverage of public events such as protests.

Government censorship, particularly of online media, also continued in 2021.

A total of 975 online news articles were censored in 2021, and 5,976 articles have been censored in the past five years, according to the data collected for the report.

Thirty-six journalists won cases against Turkey at the European Court of Human Rights, receiving more than 114,000 euros in compensation in 2021.

Turkey ranked 153th out of 180 countries in 2021 in the latest press freedom index issued watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders.

Turkish Media Overseer Penalising Independent Media With Fines – Report

Posted on December 10, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

New research published by the independent online newspaper T24 says Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council, RTUK, the state agency that monitors and sanctions radio and television broadcasts, is deliberately targeting independent media outlets with financial and other penalties to silence them.

“Tele 1 was fined for the same reasons as other media houses. RTUK penalises media houses that report the truth and do journalism. They want us to stop reporting,” Murat Taylan, General Coordinator at Tele 1 TV, told BIRN.

Taylan added that RTUK has become a government mechanism to control Turkey’s remaining independent media.

“We report on poverty, corruption, bans, rights and freedoms, which the government does not want us to report on. These fines will not change our editorial policy – but we have to share a part of our budget for fines, instead of improving our coverage and reports,” Taylan added.

It is calculated that RTUK has this year alone fined media outlets 92 times, with a total of 27 million Turkish lira, equal to 1.8 million euros; also, most of the fines were imposed on independent TV channels; 52 per cent of them on one channell, FOX TV, Turkey’s most watched TV channel.

RTUK has sanctioned news channels 57 times, and again, imposed most of the sanctions on independent and critically oriented media.

Of that number, 19 sanctions were imposed on Halk TV, 18 on Tele 1 and eight on KRT TV.

The pro-government A Haber news channel, by comparison, was fined once, after a court order because of a slander case.

“It is intended to put pressure on organisations that are followed, can form public opinion and, more importantly, can or do try to do journalism and broadcast using universal standards as much as possible,” Okan Konuralp, RTUK board member from the main opposition Republican People’s Party, CHP, told T24.

He added that the ultimate aim of the fines is to silence the independent media.

International rights groups have repeatedly accused the RTUK of going all out to punish independent media in Turkey, and of acting as a tool of the authoritarian government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey ranked in 154th place out of 180 countries in 2020 in the latest press freedom index of watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders, RSF, which classifies the Turkish government’s control over media outlets as high.

Internet Freedom Continues to Decline in Turkey: Report

Posted on September 21, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

A new report published by international rights organisation Freedom House on Tuesday says that global internet freedom has declined for the 11th consecutive year.

“More governments arrested users for nonviolent political, social, or religious speech than ever before. Officials suspended internet access in at least 20 countries, and 21 states blocked access to social media platforms,” says the report entitled Freedom on the Net 2021.

The report highlights how countries seeking to restrict users’ rights have clashed with technology companies. One of them was Turkey, which the report lists as ‘not free’.

“It is possible to see increasing digital pressure in the last ten years in the report. This report shows us that the space of freedom is declining not only in Turkey but also around the world,” Gurkan Ozturan, Media Freedom Rapid Response Coordinator at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, who and one of the authors of the report, told BIRN.

Turkey’s digital rights law, which came into effect in October 2020, says that platforms with over a million daily users are required to remove content deemed “offensive” by the Turkish authorities within 48 hours of being notified, or risk escalating penalties including fines, advertising bans, and limitations on bandwidth.

“The law reduced social media companies’ ability to resist requests from Turkish authorities that are designed to further censor opposition voices, independent journalism, and nonviolent expression,” the report says.

The report also highlights problems with online freedoms in Hungary and Serbia, although both countries are listed as being ‘free’.

It says that pro-government commentators manipulate online discussions in Turkey, Serbia and Hungary.

Blogger or internet users have been arrested or imprisoned, or held in prolonged detention, for posting political or social material in Turkey and Serbia, the report says.

Some have been physically attacked in Turkey, where government critics and human rights organisations have been subjected to technical attacks.

Meanwhile, as the booming surveillance industry has allowed governments around the world to monitor private communications, the report points out that Hungary is one of the countries where spyware has allegedly been used against journalists.

“Pegasus spyware compromised the phones of two investigative journalists who reported on corruption and the Hungarian government’s relations with foreign states,” the report says.

Germany Probes Alleged ‘Execution List’ of Turkish Journalists

Posted on July 27, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Deutsche Welle Turkish reported on Tuesday that the German Federal Interior Ministry said that it will continue to examine the possible existence of an alleged ‘execution list’ targeting Turkish journalists who have been critical of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government.

“The investigation will be deepened,” Helmut Teichmann, undersecretary at German Federal Interior Ministry, said in response to a German MP’s questions in the Bundestag, according to Deutsche Welle Turkish.

There have been increasing numbers of attacks by unknown assailants on Turkish independent journalists in recent months in Germany and other European countries.

Most recently, Turkish dissident journalist Erk Acarer was attacked in front of his house in Berlin and hospitalised on July 7.

Acarer said on Twitter that he knew the attackers and that they told him to cease his journalistic activities.

German police also warned Celal Baslangic, the editor-in-chief of Arti Tv and Arti Gercek, an independent media outlet headquartered in Cologne, that he is at risk of assassination.

Baslangic said that two police officers visited him at his house and confirmed the existence of an “assassination list” of journalistic critics of Turkish strongman Erdogan.

The German Federation of Journalists, DJV also said that according to its sources inside the German police, there is an execution list targeting 55 Turkish journalists.

“There are a series of threats and attacks against exiled journalists from Turkey living in Germany,” DJV chair Frank Uberall said in a written statement on Saturday.

He urged German Foreign Minister to summon Turkey’s envoy in Berlin and “make it unmistakably clear to the ambassador that these were unacceptable crimes”.

There has been no official response to the allegations from Turkey so far.

Germany has become home to many critical Turkish journalists since Erdogan intensified his crackdown on his opponents in the wake of a failed coup attempt in 2016.

Several Turkish media outlets also moved to Germany to continue their operations and avoid pressure.

Since the failed coup attempt in 2016, the Turkish government has closed or seized 204 media institutions.

According to watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders, more than 200 journalists and media workers have been imprisoned in Turkey in the past five years.

Turkey continues to be one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists and listed as ‘not free’ by US-based watchdog Freedom House.

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