If Al-Monitor were a Turkey-based publication, I couldn’t write this article. Yet another problematic press freedom issue has cropped up after a court in Ankara imposed a gag order on all reporting about Mosul.
The court order comes only two days after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized the media over reports on the Turkish citizens kidnapped by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) from the Turkish consulate in Mosul. Speaking at a rally in Trabzon, Erdogan said, “About 100 Turkish citizens are in the hands of ISIS elements. What are you trying to achieve by provoking [ISIS] at a time when we are trying to rescue them? This is my request to written and visual media: Please, we want you to follow the process not by agitating, without writing or talking too much about it.”
