The Council of Europe (CoE) Commissioner for Human Rights has condemned the arrest of scores of Kurdish journalists in her latest memorandum on the media, human rights defenders and civil society in Turkey. The report describes a “staggering” lack of plurality in the country and widespread violent repression, arrests and abuses targeting peaceful protesters and activists, women’s and LGBTQI+ organisations, lawyers, and private individuals exercising their right to free expression.
At the outset, the memorandum from the office of Commissioner Dunja Mijatović notes that Turkish authorities have repeatedly obstructed a visit to address continued repression in these areas, making information-gathering a challenge. Nonetheless, the report notes continued attacks in all three key spheres, calling on the Turkish authorities to “put an end to the hostile environment affecting human rights defenders, journalists, NGOs and lawyers and to stop silencing them by means of administrative and judicial action.”
The report covers further attacks on Kurdish journalists, including a further five detentions of Kurdish-language journalists earlier this year, and condemns pre-trial detention of Kurdish journalists without conviction, spotlighting the 303 days which Dicle Müftüoğlu, co-chair of Dicle Fırat Journalists Association, spent behind bars. The report particularly highlights the detention of ten pro-Kurdish journalists among 150 people arrested in raids prior to 2023’s general elections, with artists, lawyers and politicians also among those targeted.
But it is not only Kurdish media which are targeted in Turkey, the Commissioner has found. Rather, “Turkish authorities’ negative stance vis-à-vis freedom of expression and freedom of the media and the high level of intolerance towards legitimate criticism about actions of the authorities and of elected officials have reached new, worrying levels and continue to manifest themselves through systematic pressure and legal action against journalists, human rights defenders, civil society and ordinary people.”
New laws have been passed to target expression in the media and online, while the government also makes use of strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs), threats, harassment, including by judicial means, and physical attacks to target journalists. This level of repression has resulted in “staggering levels of self-censorship and a lack of pluralism.” As recently as 2022, Turkey had Europe’s highest numbers of jailed journalists, while more than 700,000 domains, 150,000 URL addresses, and 55,500 tweets were blocked in the country, according to statistics cited by the CoE.
The report also addresses the repression of Turkey’s civil society sphere and attacks on human rights defenders, most notably jailed philanthropist Osman Kavala. More broadly, Turkey uses a harsh and byzantine system of legal requirements, repeated audits, inspections, and fines, and judicial targeting, to repress the activity of NGOs and rights activists. “in 2022 alone, 1143 human rights defenders appeared before judges in 105 different criminal cases for their activities in the field of human rights,” according to the report, while there are currently 143 different criminal cases pending against Eren Keskin, a well-known lawyer and human rights defender who is also head of Turkey’s Human Rights Organisation.
The Commissioner particularly notes “numerous allegations of intimidation, threats and physical violence by law enforcement agents against human rights defenders, civil society representatives and journalists in the aftermath of the earthquake in 2023,” which claimed over 50,000 lives in Turkey alone. Women’s rights and LGBTI organisations are also subjected to particular harassment and targeting, the CoE argues, noting police raids on the homes of 24 women human rights defenders carried out in March 2022 and the use of LGBTI individuals as a political punching-bag in the run-up to the election.
Those who seek to challenge these repressive measures themselves face repression in turn. “The right to freedom of peaceful assembly, guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights, has been seriously undermined in Türkiye by systematic bans, heavy policing, including the excessive use of force [and] mass arrests,” the Commissioner finds, while lawyers and the ‘Saturday Mothers’ who have gathered for decades to peacefully protest mass disappearances by the Turkish authorities are also singled out for repression and detention. Turkey’s judicial system is represented as marred by influence and control by the governing authorities, with a “strong partiality of the judiciary to political interests and a systemic lack of independence of the Turkish judiciary.”
In conclusion, the CoE Commissioner advocates for a total change of direction, encouraging the Turkish authorities to end these attacks on free expression and democratic activity and rather “engage constructively with civil society, review and revise restrictive laws, free human rights defenders, journalists, activists and others who are imprisoned for exercising their freedom of expression.”
