(WAN/IFEX) – The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) has urged Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz to change Turkey’s restrictive press laws and free journalist Ragip Duran, who was jailed last week for 10 months for an interview he conducted with the leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). **For further background to case, see […]
(WAN/IFEX) – The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) has urged Turkish
Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz to change Turkey’s restrictive press laws and
free journalist Ragip Duran, who was jailed last week for 10 months for an
interview he conducted with the leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’
Party (PKK).
**For further background to case, see IFEX alert dated 11 June 1998**
“The jailing of Mr Duran for carrying out his professional duties as a
journalist is a clear breach of his right to freedom of expression,” the
President of WAN, Bengt Braun, wrote in a letter to the Turkish Prime
Minister.
Braun called on Yilmaz to respect international conventions on freedom of
expression.
“We strongly urge you to examine all possible legal options to rescind the
court ruling against Mr Duran, and call on your government to implement
meaningful legal reforms to end the prosecution and imprisonment of
journalists in Turkey,” said Braun, whose Paris-based association represents
15,000 newspapers in 90 countries.
Duran, who has worked for several Turkish newspapers as well as the British
Broadcasting Corporation, Agence France-Presse and the French daily
“Libération”, began serving a 10-month jail sentence on 16 June for
violating Article 7 of Turkey’s Anti-Terror Law.
The conviction stems from an interview with Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the
outlawed PKK, which appeared in the now-defunct daily “Ozgur Gundem” on 12
April 1994. His sentence was confirmed in October 1997, but he received a
postponement of sentence that was activated on 16 June.
WAN sent a delegation to Turkey in 1997 to meet with top officials and urged
them to change laws that restrict freedom of the press, but the government
continues to claim it has the right to restrict reporting on the Kurdish
independence movement.
