A roundup of key free expression news in Europe and Central Asia, based on IFEX member reports.
Turkey started the new year in the same, ugly way that it finished the old one: the wave of arrests and trials of journalists and opposition figures that began after the failed coup of July 2016 has continued. IFEX members are working hard to keep us abreast of the still-evolving situation: the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) provides a weekly overview of the arrests, beatings, charges and detentions in its Turkey Crackdown Chronicle; PEN International is keeping a list of journalists detained and charged (both before and after the attempted coup); Reporters Without Borders (RSF) recently provided an overview of Turkish journalism’s “death throes”, in which it reports that the authorities have jailed 100 journalists without trial and closed 149 media outlets; Bianet reports that 229 journalists are currently standing trial.
Turkey is also targeting educators. Of the 100,000 civil servants dismissed from their jobs between June and December 2016, Human Rights Watch reports that 28,000 were teachers. Politico reports that 631 professors and researchers were fired in the first week of 2017 alone.
Free expression groups have been protesting the persecution of various individuals, including the IFEX members Şanar Yurdatapan, Nadine Mater and Erol Önderoglu, and the investigative journalist Ahmet Şık. World writers have collaborated to issue a statement of solidarity with their jailed Turkish colleagues; cartoonists have been using their art to do the same for the detained cartoonist Musa Kart (currently facing terrorism charges). Cartoonists Rights Network International has collated some of the best offerings on its website.
January saw the tenth anniversary of murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. The investigation is still ongoing and, according to news reports, a former Turkish intelligence chief recently stated that the murder had been deliberately allowed. The European Federation of Journalists and partner organizations of the Council of Europe Platform jointly submitted a new case under the ‘impunity’ category in relation to Dink’s murder, calling for justice for the journalist.
On 23 January, despite calls from human rights groups (including ARTICLE 19, Human Rights Watch, PEN International and Amnesty International) the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) voted against holding an urgent debate on the deteriorating rights situation in Turkey, blocking the implementation of a full monitoring of the state. This hugely disappointing decision was criticized by human rights experts
PACE rejects a request for an urgent debate on the functioning of democratic institutions in Turkey: 94 for, 68 against, but no 2/3 majority
— PACE (@PACE_News) January 23, 2017
One of the many cartoons drawn in solidarity with Musa Kart and collected by Cartoonists Rights Network InternationalDr Jack & Curtis/CRNI