Dhe organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has summarized how the Turkish government is pressuring journalists with physical violence, arrests and digital persecution and trying to prevent critical reporting on state failures after the devastating February 6 earthquake in the Turkish-Syrian border region .
Two days after the first tremor, the journalists Mahmut Altintas and Sema Caglak were arrested in the badly hit municipality of Birecik on the pretext that they did not have official press cards. Altintas reports for the Kurdish Mesopotamia Agency (MA), Caglak for the women’s news agency JinNews. Another MA reporter, Mehmet Güles, was released on the same day after his arrest on suspicion of “inciting hatred”, but is under police surveillance.
Media accused of manipulation
Other journalists would become victims of intimidation campaigns on Twitter, including by Turkish politicians. The fact that the short message service was temporarily restricted was fatal, especially for the people affected by the earthquake if they wanted to forward calls for help. Just a few hours after the quake, the President of the Turkish media regulator RTÜK, Ebubekir Sahin, warned the media not to use “disinformation” to stir up panic: “We cannot turn a blind eye to media that indulge in manipulation.” International media must stand up strive for accreditations in order to be able to report from the crisis areas. Guillaume Perrier, a reporter for the French weekly Le Point, has already been denied entry.
“The Turkish authorities must not use the tragedy to further restrict press freedom,” said RSF Managing Director Christian Mihr. The national chairman of the German Association of Journalists (DJV), Frank Überall, said that the reporting benefits “the earthquake victims, as shown by the overwhelming wave of willingness to help around the world, which would not have come about without the shocking images and reports from the region”. It is the job of the press to shed light on the background: “The regime has to put up with it.” In the ranking of press freedom published by Reporters Without Borders since 2002, Turkey is 149th out of 180.
