Don't read too much into Turkey's gag order reversal, warn free press advocates
Turkey’s highest court has struck down a reporting ban surrounding a 2013 corruption probe, but some human rights defenders warn the win for press freedom may prove minor.
Turkey’s Constitutional Court has ruled unanimously that a reporting ban slapped on the work of a parliamentary commission set up to investigate corruption charges leveled against four former ministers in a quashed 2013 probe violated free expression and press freedom.
The court was responding to a complaint filed by opposition broadcaster Halk TV, which aired coverage of the corruption scandal implicating Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was then the prime minister, and his inner circle. In its ruling, the court suggested that the lower court had exceeded its jurisdiction when imposing the ban implemented supposedly to protect the reputations of the individuals being probed. The news blackout followed a petition filed in 2014 by the parliamentary commission itself. The government went into high gear to muzzle all reporting on the graft probe and fired and jailed the officers conducting it.
Allegations of corruption that have dogged Erdogan and his family ever since remain a no-go zone for the beleaguered Turkish press. Hence the ruling comes to many as a welcome surprise. But it's too early to say if it heralds any meaningful change in the sort of blanket repression that has led to the jailing of thousands of government critics, defenders warn. Kerem Altiparmak, a prominent human rights lawyer, suggested that the recent spate of magnanimity may be linked to more cynical calculations.
Altiparmak, together with fellow human rights lawyer Yaman Akdeniz and independent Turkish journalist Banu Guven, had also filed a petition against the gag order on the 2013 corruption probe, which toppled four cabinet ministers, including the former minister for EU affairs, Egemen Bagis, who was accused of receiving bribes from jailed Iranian-Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab and was recently awarded a plum ambassadorship to the Czech Republic. The Constitutional Court ruled against Altiparmak and his friends, prompting them to lodge a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
