2012

Syrian leaders tried to impose a media blackout on the country’s civil war. They failed. As CPJ’s Dahlia El-Zein reports, foreign journalists responded by smuggling themselves into the country, while Syrians picked up cameras and uploaded videos online. They all did so at extreme risk. (4:13) Read CPJ’s special report on journalists killed in Syria…

232 journalists jailed worldwide As of December 1, 2012 Analysis: A record high | Video: Free the press | Audio: From a Cuban prisonCPJ Blog: Turkey’s path forward | Rwanda’s injustice

The Dark Days of Jailing Journalists and Criminalizing Dissent Turkish authorities are engaging in widespread criminal prosecution and jailing of journalists, and are applying other forms of severe pressure to promote self-censorship in the press, a CPJ analysis shows. CPJ has found highly repressive laws, particularly in the penal code and anti-terror law; a criminal…

About This Report Nina Ognianova, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, is the lead author of this report and directed its research. CPJ Senior European Adviser Jean-Paul Marthoz, Deputy Director Robert Mahoney, and Executive Director Joel Simon contributed reporting, as did CPJ’s Turkey-based researchers, Özgür Öğret, Şafak Timur, and Nebahat Kübra Akalın. Attorney Fikret…

1. Summary The Committee to Protect Journalists prepared this report to highlight the widespread criminal prosecution and jailing of journalists in Turkey, along with the government’s use of various forms of pressure to engender self-censorship in the press. CPJ’s analysis found highly repressive laws, particularly in the penal code and anti-terror law; a criminal procedure…

2. Assault on the Press Nuray Mert, one of Turkey’s most prominent political columnists and commentators, had a long history as a government critic, but in the view of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, her comments last year opposing administration policies toward ethnic Kurds went too far. Erdoğan lashed out with a personal attack that…

Sidebar: The Dignity of Speaking Out By Nuray Mert I am among those who have had the misfortune of becoming a dissident in Turkey. I do not claim that my misfortune is of the greatest kind—in Turkey, many have suffered for years on end, under various governments and policies with a shared trait of authoritarianism.…

Sidebar: No Justice for Hrant Dink By Nicole Pope Nearly six years after Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was shot in front of his Istanbul office by a 17-year-old ultranationalist, the real instigators, their links to state institutions, and the role played by the Turkish media in making the well-known journalist and human rights activist a…