The Committee to Protect Journalists has posted its annual report on press reppression around world, entitled “Attacks on the Press 2011.”
CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney, chronicles press repressions in Turkey saying “The press is laboring under a creaking judicial system and a panoply of antiquated and vague legislation that officials and politicians of every stripe find irresistible as a weapon against muckraking reporters and critical commentators.”
In “Discarding Reform, Turkey Uses the Law to Repress,” Mahoney also chides the US for not vocally voicing concerns over press freedoms in Turkey.
“The United States seems wary of calling out Turkey on its human rights and press freedom record. Washington is comfortable with the narrative that Turkey, a NATO member and crucial U.S. ally in the region, is a progressive, secular democracy and a model of free speech compared with its neighbors Iran, Iraq, and Syria,” says Mahoney who says Ankara’s diplomatic maneuvering has put it “on the right side” of the Arab Spring.
Read Mahoney’s entire report.
About time! Nobody is looking at this, while Davutoglu tries to make Turkey the center of the world with his crazy rhetoric. Hillary Clinton is walking in lockstep with a blindfold on! Not only the internal freedoms are a problem but let’s not forget the violations of international law — an illegal blockade and illegal occupation
and they have the nerve to talk about freedom of speech regarding france