Turkish journalists appear before judges 144 times in two months

Journalists appeared before judges 144 times in October and November in Turkey, according to the press freedom report shared by CHP MP Utku Çakırözer. Many journalists were threatened, detained, or arrested.

Sunday December 03 2023 05:31 pm

Duvar English

Journalists in Turkey appeared before judges 144 times in October and November, according to the press freedom report of Republican People's Party (CHP) lawmaker Utku Çakırözer.

During this period, 11 journalists were detained and two journalists were arrested, according to the reporting of the daily BirGün.

In the last two months, there has been an increase in investigations, detentions, and arrests of journalists on the grounds of the article "publicly disseminating misleading information" added to the Turkish Penal Code, dubbed the "censorship law".

Gerçek Gündem editor Furkan Karabay was sued by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s son Bilal Erdoğan and Erdoğan's former lawyer Mustafa Doğan İnal for a total of 500,000 Turkish liras for his social media posts in which he criticized the blocking access to the bribe reports at Istanbul’s Anatolian Courthouse.

While access to the news on bribery in the courthouse was blocked, the news announcing these blocks were also blocked several times.

Three journalists were detained in southeastern Şırnak province while covering a march during the Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Former Interior Minister and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) MP Süleyman Soylu and senior executives of the government’s partner far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) directly targeted journalists.

Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) imposed administrative fines and program suspensions on Halk TV, Flash TV, Tele 1, and KRT for comments made by opposition journalists.

Çakırözer also announced that RTÜK fined seven channels 22 million liras ($761K) in the first 11 months of 2023.

The new domain names that Deutsche Welle (DW) Turkish started to use in Turkey after the online news outlet was blocked last year were also banned from access because they did not have a license, following a complaint by RTÜK and a court decision.

In November, technology giant Microsoft temporarily blocked access to all content of online news outlet T24 due to a access ban to spesific news article.