Monday, May 2, 2016

Turkey Hoping To End Press Freedom

In an effort to ensure that freedom of the press comes is stop in its tracks the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan is proceeding with the prosecution of Can Dundar editor of the opposition newspaper  Cumhuriyet  for espionage because of documentary in produced on corruption.


 Turkey has never been a paradise for journalists but of course not a hell like this,” he said in an interview in his office. “Nowadays being a journalist is much more dangerous than ever and needs courage and self-confidence.
“It’s a kind of witch-hunt ... like McCarthyism in the US in the 1950s.”
Turkish journalists say local media outlets are facing one of the worst crackdowns on press freedoms since military rule in the 1980s. Prosecutors have opened close to 2,000 cases of insults to the president since Erdoğan took office in 2014, prominent journalists appear in court two or three times a week, Kurdish journalists are beaten or detained in the country’s restive south-east and foreign journalists have been harassed or deported.
Turkey ranks 151st among 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders.





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