Turkey Is The World’s Leader In Jailing Journalists

Committee to Protect Journalists: Turkey the world's leading jailer of journalists- even exceeding Iran and China

- Joseph A. Klein

Excerpt of a very informative article:

Zitat

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The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has just issued a report finding that the number of journalists imprisoned worldwide reached a record high this year, many of whom were jailed on the untenable pretext that they were terrorist sympathizers.

The world’s leading jailer of journalists- even exceeding Iran and China, which came in second and third respectively - is Turkey. Its ruler is the Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who once said “Democracy is like a train. We shall get out when we arrive at the station we want.”

Turkey, like Iran and China, “made extensive use of vague anti-state laws to silence dissenting political views, including those expressed by ethnic minorities,” the CPJ report concluded.

In Turkey’s case, according to the CPJ, “the authorities held dozens of Kurdish reporters and editors on terror-related charges and a number of other journalists on charges of involvement in anti-government plots.”

The CPJ reported that “more than 80 percent of the journalists in Turkish jails today have not been convicted of a crime. They are being held in open-ended detentions as their cases await court verdicts.”

Normal newsgathering activities such as fielding tips, covering protests, taking photos and conducting interviews are deemed evidence of a crime.

Neither Turkey’s Mission to the United Nations or its foreign ministry has responded to my request for comment on the CPJ report.
The United Nations Spokesperson for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said during his daily press briefing on December 13th that, while the UN Secretariat has respect for the work of the CPJ, he had no comment to make on this particular report.

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“Yes, mayors and other officials are being arrested,” Prime Minister Erdoğan said last year, according to the Anatolian news agency. “But, brothers, they are no innocents. They have all been up to something.”

Worst of all, Erdoğan, who libeled Israel as a “terrorist state” during an address in Istanbul to Muslim religious leaders last month and falsely charged that “Israel violently massacres innocent children,” commands a military force which has conducted lethal airstrikes against Kurdish families, including children, in Turkey and Iraq. According to a figure published by Institute for Human Development (Children Rights Institution), 152 Kurdish children have been killed in Turkey under the rule of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party.

These were not accidental casualties, as the following quote reportedly attributed to Erdoğan demonstrates: “Our security forces will use the necessary force and intervene against anybody who agrees to be a tool of terror, including children and women. I want this to be clearly understood.”

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Remember zero considers Erdoğan to be a best bud. (If I recall correctly Erdoğan was the first call accepted at the WH to congratulate his re-selection.) Some have also made a case that Turkey is destined to become the head state of the Caliphate (at least if Erdoğan and zero have their say). Tell me again, why is Turkey in NATO? (Not that it really matters at this point, does it?)