(RSF/IFEX) – In a 16 October 2001 letter to Minister of the Interior Rüstü Kazim Yücelen, RSF protested the police attacks on Ramazan Kur, a cameraman with the Ulusal Kanal station, Hüseyin Likoglu, a reporter from the daily “Yeni Safak”, Alper Yurtsever, a photojournalist from the daily “Star”, and Ahmet Sik, a reporter from the […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a 16 October 2001 letter to Minister of the Interior Rüstü Kazim Yücelen, RSF protested the police attacks on Ramazan Kur, a cameraman with the Ulusal Kanal station, Hüseyin Likoglu, a reporter from the daily “Yeni Safak”, Alper Yurtsever, a photojournalist from the daily “Star”, and Ahmet Sik, a reporter from the daily “Radikal”, whom police also tried to arrest. The journalists were covering demonstrations against the air raids in Afghanistan, on 12 and 14 October, in Istanbul.
“There is a constant gap between Turkey’s promises in the context of its application to join the European Union and the practices of its police forces,” stated Robert Ménard, the organisation’s secretary-general. “Attacks on journalists had decreased, but the current international situation gives the government a pretext to repress certain liberties more harshly, especially press freedom,” added Ménard.
According to information collected by RSF, on 12 October, several journalists, including Yurtsever and Sik, were assaulted by police officers at Beyazit Square, in Istanbul. The journalists were there to cover a demonstration by Muslims, who were protesting the strikes in Afghanistan outside the Beyazit Mosque. Sik was manhandled by police officers and resisted their attempts to arrest him. He was released following the intervention of several of his colleagues. Moreover, Kur and Likoglu were assaulted by police officers in the Kadiköy neighbourhood of Istanbul, where left-wing opposition parties, including the ÖDP (Freedom and Solidarity Party), the EMEP (Workers’ Party) and the SIP (Party for Socialist Power), demonstrated on 14 October, demanding an end to air strikes in Afghanistan.
RSF recalled that in its most recent “Regular Report … on [Turkey’s] Progress towards Accession”, the European Commission considered that “the situation with respect to freedom of expression remains of concern,” and that the rapprochement between Turkey and the European Union was linked to Turkey’s honouring of its commitments with respect to human rights, notably as concerns Article 10 of the European Convention, which guarantees freedom of expression, the right to inform and to be informed.
