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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Turkey has stepped up its censorship of media outlets in a "witch hunt" against media critics, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Tuesday as it released its 2020 World Press Freedom Index.
Turkey, which has been described by RSF as “the world’s biggest jailer of professional journalists," has been locally and internationally criticized for its crackdown on media outlets and jailing of journalists.
It rose from 157 to 154 in the 2020 Press Freedom Index, which measures the situation for journalists across the globe.
“Turkey’s three-point rise in the index is just the result of other countries falling,” the group clarified, adding that “Turkey is more authoritarian than ever.”
“Almost everywhere in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, strongmen are consolidating their grip on news and information. They include [President] Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey (up 3 at 154th), where censorship of the media, especially online media, has been stepped up,” the report read.
Most Turkish media outlets are pro-government, with opposition outlets subject to censorship and arrest of their employees. The clampdown dramatically increased after the failed coup attempt in July 2016, blamed on Fethullah Gulen - a former ally of Erdogan who lives in self-exile in the US.
“After the elimination of dozens of media outlets and the acquisition of Turkey’s biggest media group by a pro-government conglomerate [in the wake of the coup], the authorities are tightening their grip on what little is left of pluralism – a handful of media outlets that are being harassed and marginalized,” the RSF says on its website page on Turkey.
The crackdown has also included independent journalists and officials belonging to the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), despite their condemnation of the putsch.
Many are arrested on charges of membership of or producing propaganda for a terror organization –often referring to the outlawed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). Criticism of Ankara’s security policies on social media has also led to arrest.
Turkish military operations in northern Syria against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), including Operation Peace Spring in October 2019, also led to the imprisonment of dozens of people for their social media posts, likes, comments and shares - deemed as “propaganda” for the SDF.
Ankara regards the PKK as a terrorist organization and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which makes up most of the SDF, as its Syrian offshoot. The latter has denied organic links to the PKK but say they admire the ideology of its leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Several journalists were arrested in early March for covering the death of a Turkish intelligence officer in Libya. The Committee to Protect Journalists demanded their release.
Rudaw reporter Rawin Sterk has been held since early March on terror-related charges after reporting on the casualties of Turkish troops in a clash with Syrian regime forces in northwest Syria.
The Turkish parliament approved a bill on April 14 which allows the release of 90,000 prisoners as part of measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 in jails, but it excluded journalists, activists and political prisoners. The exclusion was widely criticized by opposition parties and rights groups.
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