The Turkish Publishers Association paints a bleak picture of freedom of expression under Erdogan.
In 2020, books with uncomfortable content - including children's stories - were banned.
In the past year, numerous books were banned in Turkey.
Often these deal with undesirable topics or have political explosive power.
Another sign of how much censorship is growing under President Erdogan.
Ankara - The freedom of the press in Turkey has not been in good shape for a long time.
In 2020, the Mediterranean country landed at a worrying place 154 out of 180 in the ranking of the organization Reporters Without Borders.
Journalists and media workers who are not in line with the government are put under pressure and often arrested.
Now the increasing restriction of freedom of expression under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also affecting the publishing industry more and more.
A terrifying record for freedom of the press: numerous books were banned in Turkey in 2020
The Turkish Publishers Association published a 2020 summary a few days ago, which shows that several books have been banned in the past year.
These include two works by Amnesty International Turkey, as the
taz
quotes from the report.
These are publications that deal with the topic of feminism.
The human rights organization has long seemed a thorn in the side of the government.
Not only were the two books banned.
In 2017 the public prosecutor brought charges against the acting director of Amnesty International Turkey, Taner Kılıç.
In 2020 he was sentenced to six years and three months for alleged "membership in a terrorist organization".
A former director and two other members of the organization were also sentenced to prison terms.
Children's books are also affected - Erdogan's government has banned them because of “obscene content”
Not only Amnesty International was affected by the book bans.
Three publications by the opposition party CHP were also banned.
This is particularly noticeable because they would have developed potentially explosive political power.
Because two works deal
with serious corruption
affairs, according to
taz
.
Investigations are underway against the publisher.
The third takes up open questions about the attempted coup in 2016.
Because the attempted coup has by no means been completely cleared up to this day, also because the ruling party AKP is actively trying to prevent it.
The situation is remarkably difficult for Kurdish authors.
Her books are particularly often banned.
But even children's books are not spared from the censorship rage.
In the past year alone,
13 children's books were banned
according to
taz
information.
In 2019 it became known that Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government had school books burned.
The children's stories were banned because they allegedly had "obscene content".
Censorship on the Internet: New advertising ban for Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest
The censorship campaign in Turkey is not limited to the print sector, however.
In mid-January, the government also banned several online services from advertising.
In the future, companies that continue to place advertisements in the short message service Twitter, its streaming app Periscope and the picture service Pinterest would be punished, said the Turkish Infrastructure Minister Ömer Fatih Sayan in a tweet.
According to the new rules of the Turkish government, social networks with more than one million daily users must name responsible persons in Turkey who delete content from the platforms according to court orders.
Should Twitter, Periscope and Pinterest continue to fail, the Turkish government intends to cut their Internet bandwidth by 50 percent in April and by 90 percent in May.
This would practically shut down the services.
(mam / AFP)
