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Hatay 1st Criminal Court of Peace imposed an access block to Pir News Agency (PIRHA) and Yeni Yaşam’s website.
After the decision of the Court, Information Technologies and Communications Authority (BTK) censored the website of Yeni Yaşam “yeniyasamgazetesi2.com” and PİRHA “pirha.net”.
The website of Yeni Yaşam was also blocked on January 28. The newspaper will be active as “yeniyasamgazetesi3.com”in Turkey.
PIRHA, which is a first in terms of being a news agency belonging to the Alevi community and has been broadcasting since 2016, said: “Freedom of the press is an indispensable part of democracy. The free press cannot be silenced. There is no free society if there is no free press.”
PIRHA will also appeal against the decision.
Censor in Turkey
According to the data shared by the Freedom of Expression Association, within the last 14 years, 467,11 websites from Turkey have been blocked from access by 408,808 different decisions made by 764 different institutions (courts and administrative institutions).
The number of websites blocked in 2020 alone is 58,809.
Medya News is also blocked in Turkey
The Twitter account of Medya News was also blocked in Turkey on 6th of August 2021 . Unfortunatelly, since then People in Turkey face the message “withheld in Turkey in response to a legal demand” when they want to reach our stories on Twitter. MedyaNews has officially appealed to Twitter against the decision. The editorial board of the MedyaNews stated the following regarding the censor:
“As the MedyaNews editorial board, it would be insincere for us to say that we did not expect such a ban in Turkey, a country about which we have published countless reports on how freedom of expression and freedom of the media was so relentlessly violated. Our very own news sources and many of the media outlets we work closely with have been subjected to similar and much worse attacks. So, MedyaNews will continue to practice independent journalism and report the news based on the realities of the oppressed peoples in Turkey and Kurdistan and around the world, being aware of the fact that such attacks on freedom of media can only be defeated through a continuous media struggle.”
