Press Freedom in Turkey

Turkey's prime minister has threatened legal action against the Times newspaper for publishing an open letter criticising his handling of recent protests.

Hollywood celebrities and academics were among those who signed the letter this week accusing Turkey's government of dictatorial rule .

Erdogan claimed in comments broadcast on Turkey's NTV channel:

The Times is renting out its own pages for money. This is the Times' failing. We will pursue legal channels regarding the Times.

Erdogan said those who signed the letter, taken out as an full-page advertisement:

If they truly believed in democracy, they couldn't have displayed such a lack of character to call the leader of a party that won 50% of the vote a dictator.

The open letter was signed by 30 people including Turkish pianist Fazil Say, US film stars Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, film director David Lynch and British historian David Starkey.

Hayat TV, a progressive Turkish TV channel of the working people, the youth, women and the intellectuals is facing closure.

We believe this is a blow to people's freedom of information.

The decision for the closure is made by the broadcasting regulator RTÜK, Radio & Television High Commission with the pretext that Hayat TV has no licence.

This is not true.

Hayat TV has been broadcasting since 21 March 2007 by ofcom license via TURKSAT satellite. But a recent change in broadcasting rules via TURKSAT requires broadcasters to obtain a RTÜK license to be able to broadcast via satellite.

Our application for a RTÜK license has been submitted and pending for a decision. We have taken all the necessary steps and RTÜK agreed that we could carry on broadcasting as it is until a RTÜK license is granted.

However, RTÜK is now making an arbitrary decision to close down our channel because of, we believe, our broadcast of recent protests in Istanbul and across Turkey.

RTÜK says they investigated "the complaints received for our coverage of the Gezi Park protests" and made a decision for the closure.

We believe this closure is part of the overall repression on the media in Turkey during the more than two-week-long Gezi Park protests. Four other TV channels have been given a fine by RTUK because of their coverage of the recent events.

RTUK sent a letter to TURKSAT to put an end to Hayat TV broadcast at 12:00 p.m. on Friday, 14 th June 2013.

We believe this arbitrary and unlawful decision should be reversed.

We call on all democratically minded people to show solidarity with Hayat TV .

Mustafa Kara

Hayat TV Broadcast Coordinator

Update: 4 TV stations fined for reporting on the Taksim park protests

15th June 2013.  See  article from  cpj.org

The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Turkish state media regulator to reverse its decision to penalize four TV stations in connection with their coverage of the demonstrations that have occurred nationwide over the past two weeks.

The state broadcast regulator, the High Council of Radio and Television (RTÜK), levied fines against the pro-opposition TV stations Ulusal Kanal, Halk TV, Cem TV, and EM TV, in the amount of 12,000 Turkish lira (US$6,460) each, for allegedly "inciting violence" and "violating broadcasting principles,". RTÜK claimed that the stations' live coverage of clashes between riot police and protesters in Taksim Square could harm the physical, moral, and mental development of children and young people.

While mainstream television channels such as Habertürk, CNN Türk, and NTV were airing unrelated programming despite the dramatic events unfolding in Istanbul's streets--incurring the frustration of protesters--Ulusal Kanal, Halk TV, Cem TV, and EM TV were streaming live coverage.

The European Court of Human Rights has ordered Turkey to pay a total of over 40,000 Euros to 20 Turkish journalists as compensation for having violated their rights.

In two separate cases, the Court ruled on 26 January that Turkey had violated freedom of speech laws when it suspended five newspapers and sentenced a magazine editor to prison over an article criticizing prison brutality.

Welcoming the judgment, IPI Board Member Ferai Tinc, Chairperson of the IPI Turkish National Committee, said: We would like that the law that allows [such press freedom violations] be abolished. We would like the canceling of prison sentences in cases concerning the media. No one can be imprisoned for what he has written.

In the first case, the five newspapers concerned are Gndem, Yedinci Gn, Haftaya Bak, Yaamda Demokrasi and Gerçek Demokrasi. Between 9 October and 15 December 2007, an Istanbul court ordered the suspension of all five newspapers for periods ranging from fifteen days to a month for violating the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The Court stated that various articles in the newspapers supported the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an organisation that is considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey and much of the international community, including the European Union and the United States.

The second case was in connection with two articles published in February 2001 by the Turkish magazine Yeni Dnya çin Çaðr. The articles reportedly criticized a security operation in Turkish prisons which left 30 inmates dead. A graphic cover photo showed prisoners who had been burned or beaten.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled in both cases that Turkey had violated Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights because the practice of banning the future publication of entire periodicals went beyond any necessary restraint and amounted to censorship.

IPI welcomes the judgment by the European Court of Human Rights, said IPI Director David Dadge. Particularly since Turkey is engaged in accession talks with the European Union, it is important that it abides by democratic standards of freedom of expression and the media.

In March 2009, IPI took its concerns about press freedom in Turkey to the European Commission in Brussels. It appealed to European Commission leaders to make press freedom a priority in ongoing membership talks with Turkey amid concern over verbal attacks on news organisations and continued legal hurdles to free expression in the country.

The Turkish daily newspaper Gnlk has been banned for one month because of articles and news items written by Professor Amir Hassanpour of Toronto University.

The Istanbul 13th High Criminal Court took this decision on the grounds of article 7/2 in the Anti-Terrorism Law, claiming that Hassanpour's articles contain organizational propaganda.

In a written statement, Gnlk's chief editor Filiz Koçali criticized the decision: We cannot talk about a democratic opening if we cannot make the Kurdish people talk.

Koçali continues: The reason for the ban is an article written by the internationally renowned professor Hassanpour, who has published articles in international journals and newspapers. With this decision Turkey applies censorship to an internationally well-known linguist.

The Democratic Society Party (DTP) also condemned the decision, emphasizing that the government has to ease the pressure on freedom of expression in order to proceed on the way to finding a solution to the Kurdish question. Therefore they ask for an amendment of the restrictive regulations in the Turkish Criminal Code (TCK) and in the Anti-Terrorism Law.

Gnlk newspaper has been publishing since January this year and was handed a two-month ban in June for spreading PKK propaganda in two issues of the paper.

In his article titled Linguistic rights in the linguistics system of the developed world: State, market and communication technologies Hassanpour deals with the pressure on the Kurdish language in Turkey.