turkey crackdown chronicle

346 results

Aslı Erdoğan

Police detained Erdoğan, a novelist, scientist, columnist, and member of the shuttered daily newspaper Özgür Gündem‘s advisory board, at her home in Istanbul on August 16, 2016. Istanbul’s Fourth Court of Penal Peace on August 19, 2016, arraigned her on charges of “disrupting the unity of the state and the integrity of the country,” and…

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Haşim Söylemez

Police in Istanbul detained Haşim Söylemez, a former columnist for the magazine Aksiyon, on July 26, 2016, as part of a sweeping purge of journalists and others suspected of following exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen, according to press reports. The government accuses Gülen of maintaining a terrorist organization and “parallel state structure” (or FETÖ/PDY, as the…

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Cihan Acar

Police in Istanbul detained Cihan Acar, a former editor for the shuttered daily newspaper Bugün, on July 26, 2016, as part of a sweeping purge of journalists and others suspected of following exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen, according to press reports. The government accuses Gülen of maintaining a terrorist organization and “parallel state structure” (or FETÖ/PDY,…

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Bünyamin Köseli

Police in Istanbul detained Bünyamin Köseli, a former reporter for the magazine Aksiyon, on July 26, 2016, as part of a sweeping purge of journalists and others suspected of following exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen, according to press reports. The government accuses Gülen of maintaining a terrorist organization and “parallel state structure” (or FETÖ/PDY, as the…

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Vedat Demir

Police in Istanbul detained Vedat Demir, a media professor and a former columnist for the shuttered daily Yarına Bakış, on July 24, 2016, as part of a sweeping purge of journalists and others suspected of following exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen, according to the Internet newspaper Sol. The government accuses Gülen of maintaining a terrorist organization…

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Ömer Çelik

Ömer Çelik, a freelance journalist, was among 15 Kurdish journalists and a media worker who were taken into police custody in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakır in June 2022 and were jailed without charge pending trial. Çelik, a former editor for the shuttered pro-Kurdish outlets Dicle News Agency (DİHA) and Dihaber, and the still-active Mezopotamya News Agency, was…

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Murat Aksoy

Murat Aksoy, a former columnist for the shuttered daily Yeni Hayat, was taken to prison on November 22, 2018, after an appeals court in October 2018 upheld a prison sentence handed down to him in March of the same year, according to news reports. At the hearing in March, the court convicted Aksoy, fellow journalist Atilla Taş, and 27…

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Uğur Akgül

Authorities in the southeastern city of Mardin took Uğur Akgül, a former reporter for the shuttered pro-Kurdish Dicle News Agency (DİHA), into custody on August 8, 2018, to serve his prison sentence of four years, after an appeals court upheld the conviction, according to reports. Police first detained Akgül and fellow DİHA journalist Meltem Oktay…

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Kemal Sancılı

Authorities on May 9, 2018, detained Kemal Sancılı, former publisher of the shuttered pro-Kurdish daily Özgür Gündem, in the İpsala district of the western province of Edirne, according to news reports. Police questioned Sancılı for two days, before a court ordered him to be sent to Silivri Prison in Istanbul pending trial, the pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya…

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İdris Yılmaz

A Van court on January 22, 2018, ordered İdris Yılmaz, a former reporter for the shuttered pro-Kurdish Dicle News Agency (DİHA) and an editor and reporter for the local online newspapers Ajans Erbil Haber and Gazete Yaşam, to be jailed pending trial on charges of "making propaganda for a [terrorist] organization," according to his lawyer….

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