Damascus-Sana
While the Turkish regime continues its policies of suppressing freedoms and silencing voices against journalists, media professionals and opinion platforms, the last of which was the restriction of social media sites, domestic and international condemnations of the Justice and Development Party President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continue to follow against the backdrop of these continuous violations.
Erdogan's repressive practices documented by a report prepared by the opposition Republican People's Party entitled "Freedom of the Press for 2020" in which he explained that the year 2020 was very difficult for journalists and freedom of the press due to the repressive practices of the Turkish regime against freedom of opinion, which reached its climax with the arrest of 86 journalists and the arrest of 70 others in addition to To raise 361 lawsuits against journalists and impose 368 censorship operations on news of independent newspapers and magazines, according to the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet.
The report, which indicated that there are more than 6 thousand unemployed media professionals, including a journalist, a reporter, a publisher, a photographer, and a worker at a printing press, pointed out that even the websites were not spared Erdogan's brutality, according to what the Associated Press reported, as he imposed new restrictions and banned advertisements on social media sites and imposed Restrictions on access to nearly 2,000 news stories and over 100 websites.
While the Secretary General of the International Journalists Association, Mustafa Kilic, considered that censorship of freedom of expression in Turkey has become a foregone conclusion and the situation has become worse than before, the Stockholm Center for Freedom criticized the efforts of the Justice and Development Government to suppress dissenting voices and freedom of expression as part of a campaign that is no longer limited to the Turkish domestic level, but rather extended To target Turkish media outlets and opponents in the European Union.
According to reports published by several media outlets, the number of victims of Turkish prisons as a result of health neglect increased to 88 during the year 2020, among whom 20 were infected with Coronavirus, in addition to 4 cases who died due to other diseases, while Turkish prisons recorded 1,289 cases of torture and ill-treatment during the same year.
While the deputy of the Turkish opposition Republican People's Party, Utko Shaker Ozer, announced in statements published by Turkey Now that five journalists were subjected to actual attacks in the first 15 days of 2021, and he confirmed that local journalists in Elazig and Diyarbakir were beaten and threatened because of their news and publications, leading to attacks targeting their lives. .
Press and media freedom in Turkey is experiencing a major crisis against the backdrop of the Erdogan regime's practice of great restrictions that amount to closure of newspapers and media outlets for criticizing the significant decline in economic conditions, especially after the spread of corruption and the involvement of Erdogan, his close associates and officials in the Justice and Development Party government in a large number of scandals.
Fahmy Al Shaarawy