OpEdNews Op Eds 3\/12\/2013 at 01:43:21<\/p>\n
opednews.com<\/p>\n
Turkey Targets Press Freedom<\/p>\n
by Stephen Lendman<\/p>\n
Turkey is more police state than democracy.<\/p>\n
No country imprisons more journalists than Turkey. Ragip Zarakolu understands well. He’s a prominent human rights activist\/publisher. He’s a former Nobel Peace Prize nominee. He’s been maliciously targeted for years.<\/p>\n
In 1998, he won the International Publishers Association (IPA) International Freedom to Publish Award. He couldn’t attend the Frankfurt ceremony. Authorities confiscated his passport.<\/p>\n
In 2003, he received the NOVIB\/PEN Free Expression Award. In 2008, IPA gave him a second Freedom to Publish Award.<\/p>\n
In March 2012, he was imprisoned. He was targeted after receiving the Assyrian Culture Centre’s Assyrian Cultural Award. It honored his human and minority rights advocacy.<\/p>\n
He’s been wrongly charged with state crimes more than 70 times. He faces 15 years in prison if convicted of current terrorist-related ones. His trial begins in April.<\/p>\n
He’s one of thousands of journalists, lawyers, activists, and others accused of belonging to or aiding and abetting the Kurdistan-based Union of Communities. Turkey conflates it with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).<\/p>\n
Zarakolu calls charges against him “state terrorism.” Turkey is part totalitarian, he says. Authorities target journalists and intellectuals urging “Kurdish question” solutions.<\/p>\n
An atmosphere of fear prevails. Widespread arrests follow. No one’s safe.<\/p>\n
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) calls itself “an independent nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide.”<\/p>\n
It reported on “Turkey’s Press Freedom Crisis: The Dark Days of Jailing Journalists and Criminalizing Dissent.”<\/p>\n
via OpEdNews – Article: Turkey Targets Press Freedom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OpEdNews Op Eds 3\/12\/2013 at 01:43:21 opednews.com Turkey Targets Press Freedom by Stephen Lendman Turkey is more police state than democracy. No country imprisons more journalists than Turkey. Ragip Zarakolu understands well. He’s a prominent human rights activist\/publisher. He’s a former Nobel Peace Prize nominee. He’s been maliciously targeted for years. In 1998, he won […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":33845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[4213],"class_list":["post-67695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-press-freedom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}