(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has condemned Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s legal hounding of opposition journalists after he won yet another defamation case against a journalist who poked fun at him in a satirical article. On 5 April 2005, Fikret Otyam, 79, was ordered to pay damages of 2,835 euros (approx. US$3,660), in what was […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has condemned Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s legal hounding of opposition journalists after he won yet another defamation case against a journalist who poked fun at him in a satirical article.
On 5 April 2005, Fikret Otyam, 79, was ordered to pay damages of 2,835 euros (approx. US$3,660), in what was at least the fourth case brought by the prime minister against a journalist since December 2004.
“Recep Tayyip Erdogan should respect freedom of expression and press freedom, fundamental principles of European judicial standards. Turkish journalists, like their European colleagues, should be allowed to make satirical comments about the authorities without fear of being systematically dragged before the courts. Otherwise, they will be in danger of practising self-censorship which is very damaging to press freedom,” the organisation noted.
Otyam, who is also a renowned painter, recently wrote a sarcastic article in the weekly “Aydinlik” that poked fun at the prime minister’s stance on adultery. The offending sentence read, “Recep has successfully lowered the debate (on Turkey’s entry to the European Union) to the level of the crotch”.
Erdogan, apparently without much sense of humour, brought a case against Otyam before the 13th Chamber of the Ankara Correctional Court, which ruled in the prime minister’s favour on 5 April.
In late March, Erdogan also launched several cases against the satirical weekly “Penguen”, for a cartoon it carried on 24 February captioned, “The World of Tayyip”, which showed him in the form of various animals. The prime minister claimed 24,000 euros (approx. US$31,000) in damages from “Penguen”.
He previously brought a case against two cartoonists. One of them, Musa Kart, was sentenced by an Ankara court on 21 December 2004 to a fine of about 3,000 euros (approx. US$3,880) for drawing the prime minister with a cat’s head, in the leftist republican daily “Cumhuriyet”.
The Turkish prime minister also filed a defamation complaint against cartoonist Sefer Selvi, who drew prime ministerial adviser Cüneyt Zapsu perched on Erdogan’s back, for the leftist daily “Günlük Evrensel”. The case is ongoing.
The Turkish press has protested vehemently against the prime minister’s decision to take such legal action against journalists, despite his assurances that he would increase freedoms in Turkey in light of its application for European Union membership.
