Ahead of elections, Turkey clamps down on press freedom
The Turkish government’s mounting pressure on mainstream and opposition media ahead of the Nov. 1 elections results in a physical assault on a popular journalist.
September 2015 in Turkey will be remembered as a month in which suppression of press freedom reached an unprecedented level in almost all realms and attacks on journalists escalated.
The month began with a police raid on the offices of the Bugun newspaper and its sister TV channel as part of a judicial probe into the Gulen movement, the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) former ally that now stands accused of being a terrorist group. The two media outlets are owned by Koza Ipek Holding, a business group close to the movement of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, which the authorities now call the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETO). Koza Ipek is accused of financing FETO, a term first used in July in an indictment drawn up by the chief prosecutor’s office in Konya.
