Turkey jails more journalists than any other nation. Since Recep Tayyip Erdogan was elected as president of Turkey in 2014 freedom of press has deteriorated in Turkey.
For a country that considers itself democratic but it does not practice democracy while hundreds of journalists are detained in prisons because their views are different to the President.
Any journalist who disagrees with the president is detained, Murat Bayram editor of Bianet an online newspaper in Istanbul told SBS Kurdish.
Journalists also face routine violation of their rights as defendants in criminal proceedings, including extended pre-trial detention ruled illegal by Turkey’s Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights.
“In this month, the month of May 2019 nine journalists are being trialed and between all those journalists an imprisonment sentence of 47 years has been given.” said Mr Murat.
There are more than 2,474 newspapers and 108 satellite television stations in Turkey of which none are independent; they are all controlled by the government, Mr Bayram told SBS Kurdish’s Mayada Kordy Khalil.
Journalists are deprived from writing freely in Turkey. Even those who write in social media are monitored by the authorities.
“In 2018, 2,050 news articles were terminated from being published. There are 2,474 newspapers, 108 TV satellites in Turkey none are in Kurdish. There are 52 million social media users in Turkey and only two online cultural newspapers are in Kurdish.” said Mr Bayram.
“In general the freedom of press in Turkey is fairly poor. There are 180 countries for freedom press in the world, Turkey is ranked number 157.” said Mr Bayram.
