CPJ promotes press freedom worldwide and defends the right of journalists to report the news without fear of reprisal.
🙄 Shameful #Trifecta4Trump: In 44 days, @realdonaldtrump has met with leaders of the 3 worst jailers of journalists: #Egypt, #China & #Turkey.
Donald Trump is set to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the White House on Tuesday. Erdoğan’s Turkey was the world’s worst jailer of reporters in 2016– and Trump has already met with the heads of the 2nd- and 3rd-worst jailers of journalists, China’s Xi Jinping and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. When he meets Erdoğan, Trump will complete a troubling trifecta.
Visit CPJ online: www.cpj.org
Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/PressFreedom
Since last month’s attempted coup, trust in the country’s judicial system has hit a new low. “Press freedom is in a worse state than ever before…I would sum it up like this: the coup was prevented, but the junta came to power.” Ahmet Sik, investigative journalist, discusses Turkey’s attempt to close down 102 media outlets and arrest of 48 journalists.
Read more: Stop the press: Turkey’s crackdown on its media goes into overdrive | World news | The Guardian
Following a court order shuttering the newspaper, police in Istanbul yesterday raided Özgür Gündem’s office and detained at least 21 journalists, according to news reports.
Özgür Gündem faces charges of propagandizing for a terrorist organization - the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which the Turkish government lists as a terrorist group – incitement to insurrection, and publishing articles that threaten the security and territorial integrity of the state.
Twitter has made a name for itself as a champion of free speech around the world. Following the recent coup attempt in Turkey, however, something has changed in the way it approaches censorship, and the company refuses to talk about it.
Twitter’s policy toward Turkey—limited “censoring to avoid a ban”—puts the company between a rock and a hard place: If Twitter does not comply with Turkey’s ever-increasing censorship requests to silence dissidents, it may face a nationwide ban that silences everyone. But this bullying has just gained more ground against press freedoms in Turkey with Twitter censoring journalists’ accounts that Turkish government wants banned.
How the Internet Saved Turkey’s Internet-Hating President:
As the camera focused on the iPhone in the anchor’s hand, the president called on the people of Turkey to take to the streets and guard the airports. But this couldn’t happen by itself. People would need WhatsApp, Twitter and other tools on their phones to mobilize. The president also tweeted out the call to his more than eight million followers to resist the coup. […]
By the time Mr. Erdogan’s plane landed in Istanbul, some five hours after the coup attempt began, #darbeyehayir (“No to the coup”) had been trending on Twitter for hours. Thousands of people were already at the airport to greet the president and more were on the way.
Only three years ago, I was at the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul, breathing tear gas and listening to Mr. Erdogan, then the prime minister, call Twitter “the worst menace to society,” after protesters used it to organize their demonstrations against authoritarianism, censorship and police brutality.
Turkey, the world champion in Twitter censorship, presents a tough challenge for regular internet users thanks to its growing blacklist of 100,000 banned websites.
But determined Turks are tough. After all, they are the ones who placed the #TurkeyBlockedTwitter hashtag on world’s top trends list—while Twitter was blocked nationwide.