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Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a Turkish politician serving as the current President of Turkey. He previously served as Prime Minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014 and as Mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998. He founded the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001, leading it to election victories in 2002, 2007, and 2011 before being required to stand down upon his election as President in 2014. He later returned to the AKP leadership in 2017 following the constitutional referendum that year. Coming from an Islamist political background and self-describing as a conservative democrat, he has promoted socially conservative and populist policies during his administration.
Reporters Without Borders is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization that safeguards the right to freedom of information. Its advocacy is founded on the belief that everyone requires access to the news and information, inspired by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that recognizes the right to receive and share information regardless of frontiers, along with other international rights charters. RSF has consultative status at the United Nations, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, and the International Organisation of the Francophonie.
Censorship in South Asia can apply to books, movies, the Internet and other media. Censorship occurs on religious, moral and political grounds, which is controversial in itself as the latter especially is seen as contrary to the tenets of democracy, in terms of freedom of speech and the right to freely criticise the government.
The mass media in Turkey includes a wide variety of domestic and foreign periodicals expressing disparate views, and domestic newspapers are extremely competitive. However, media ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few large private media groups which are typically part of wider conglomerates controlled by wealthy individuals, which limits the views that are presented. In addition, the companies are willing to use their influence to support their owners' wider business interests, including by trying to maintain friendly relations with the government. The media exert a strong influence on public opinion. Censorship in Turkey is also an issue, and in the 2000s Turkey has seen many journalists arrested and writers prosecuted. On Reporters Without Borders' Press Freedom Index it has fallen from being ranked around 100 in 2005 to around 150 in 2013.
Censorship in Turkey is regulated by domestic and international legislation, the latter taking precedence over domestic law, according to Article 90 of the Constitution of Turkey.
Internet censorship is the control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet enacted by regulators, or on their own initiative. Individuals and organizations may engage in self-censorship for moral, religious, or business reasons, to conform to societal norms, due to intimidation, or out of fear of legal or other consequences.
Democratic initiative process is the name of the process in which the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan launched a project aiming to improve standards of democracy, freedoms and respect for human rights in Turkey. The project is called the Unity and Fraternity Project. Interior Minister Beşir Atalay stated the primary goals of the initiative as improving the democratic standards and to end terrorism in Turkey. "We will issue circulars in the short term, pass laws in the medium term, and make constitutional amendments in the long term and take required steps," Prime Minister Erdoğan said.
Özgür Gündem was an Istanbul-based daily Turkish language newspaper, mainly read by Kurds. Launched in May 1992, the newspaper was known for its extensive reporting on the Kurdish-Turkish conflict, and was regularly accused of making propaganda for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Its editors and staff have frequently been arrested and prosecuted, which resulted in multiple publication bans. Since April 1994, the publication continued under different names until Özgür Gündem was relaunched in 2011.
Internet censorship in the Russian Federation is enforced on the basis of several laws and through several mechanisms. Since 2012, Russia maintains a centralized internet blacklist maintained by the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor). The list is used for the censorship of individual URLs, domain names, and IP addresses. It was originally introduced to block sites that contain materials advocating drug abuse and drug production, descriptions of suicide methods, and containing child pornography. It was subsequently amended to allow the blocking of materials that are classified as extremist by including them to the Federal List of Extremist Materials. According to Freedom House, these regulations have been frequently abused to block criticism of the federal government or local administrations. A law prohibiting "abuse of mass media freedom" implements a process for the shutting down of online media outlets. In March of 2018 the bill which introduced fines for those who are deemed to be spreading "fake news" and show "blatant disrespect" toward the state authorities was signed into law.
Dicle Haber Ajansı, DIHA, is a "pro-Kurdish" news agency of Turkey. In March 2012 Reporters without Borders reported that 27 of its journalists were in prison. DIHA produces news reports on Turkish, Kurdish, English
Turkey has been diplomatically and militarily involved in the Syrian civil war since its outbreak in 2011. Initially condemning the Syrian government at the outbreak of civil unrest in Syria during the spring of 2011, the Turkish government's involvement gradually evolved into military assistance for the Free Syrian Army in July 2011, border clashes in 2012, and direct military interventions in 2016–17, in 2018, in 2019, and in 2020. The military operations have resulted in the Turkish occupation of northern Syria since August 2016.
GreatFire (GreatFire.org) is a non-profit organization that monitors the status of websites censored by the Great Firewall of China and helps Chinese Internet users circumvent the censorship and blockage of websites in China. The website also hosts a testing system that allowed visitors to test in real time the accessibility of a website from various locations within China. The organization's stated mission was to "bring transparency to the Great Firewall of China."
The 2016–present purges in Turkey is a series of purges by the government of Turkey enabled by a state of emergency in reaction to the 15 July failed coup d'état. The purges began with the arrest of Turkish Armed Forces personnel reportedly linked to the coup attempt but arrests were expanded to include other elements of the Turkish military, as well as civil servants and private citizens. These later actions reflected a power struggle between secularist and Islamist political elites in Turkey, affected people who were not active in nor aware of the coup, but who the government claimed were connected with the Gülen movement, an opposition group which the government blamed for the coup. Possession of books authored by Gülen was considered valid evidence of such a connection and cause for arrest.
Turkey's media purge after the failed coup d'état on July 15, 2016 resulted in the shutdown of at least 131 media outlets and the arrest of 117 journalists – at least 35 of whom have been indicted for "membership in a terror group".
Turkey Blocks is an independent digital research organization that monitors internet access restrictions and their relation to political incidents in Turkey. Using its network of monitoring probes, the project has uncovered and documented systematic mass-censorship of communications infrastructure, primarily social media services, during national emergencies and incidents of political significance relating to human rights, freedom of expression and public policy in the region.
Erol Önderoğlu is a Turkish-French journalist, and a representative of Reporters Without Borders. In 2016, he was arrested by the Turkish government for his work supporting Ozgur Gundem, a Kurdish newspaper, and accused of supporting terrorists; his arrest was widely criticized as suppression of freedom of the press.
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Andrew Craig Brunson is an American-Hungarian pastor and a teaching elder of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Brunson was arrested in Turkey, where he had lived since the mid-1990s, in October 2016 during the purges occurring after the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt against Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In 2019, Brunson published a memoir about his ordeal. Brunson is an evangelical pastor of the Izmir Resurrection Church, a small Protestant church with about 25 congregants. T-Online describes the church as having been held in a room in a tenement.
The presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan began when Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took the oath of office on 28 August 2014 and became the 12th president of Turkey. He administered the new Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu's oath on 29 August. When asked about his lower-than-expected 51.79% share of the vote, he allegedly responded, "there were even those who did not like the Prophet. I, however, won 52%." Assuming the role of President, Erdoğan was criticized for openly stating that he would not maintain the tradition of presidential neutrality. Erdoğan has also stated his intention to pursue a more active role as President, such as utilising the President's rarely used cabinet-calling powers. The political opposition has argued that Erdoğan will continue to pursue his own political agenda, controlling the government, while his new Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu would be docile and submissive. Furthermore, the domination of loyal Erdoğan supporters in Davutoğlu's cabinet fuelled speculation that Erdoğan intended to exercise substantial control over the government.
References
- ↑ "Unblocked website: Sendika.org". Reporters Without Borders. 2016.
- ↑ "Collateral Freedom: thwarting censorship in 13 "Enemy of the Internet" countries". Reporters Without Borders. 2016. As of 2017-12-19 the mirror site used by RSN ( https://sdk.global.ssl.fastly.net/ ) was not functional, and Wayback Machine records from September 2016 suggest it was never used except as a redirect to what was then sendika10.org.
- ↑ "In Turkey, technical attacks imperil digital media survival". International Press Institute.
- ↑ "Blocked for 49 Times, sendika.org Applies For Guinness World Record". BIA News. 2017-04-05.
- ↑ "Anti-Erdogan group seeks Guinness record title for most-blocked website". The Times. 2017-07-11.
