CARTOONISTS RIGHTS NETWORK INTERNATIONAL
  • Latest News
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Testimonies
    • Leadership
    • Reps 2020
    • Major Support
    • 990’s / 501(c)3
    • Privacy Policy
  • Our Clients
    • Cartoonists Under Threat
    • Award Winners
      • Where They Are Now
  • BLOG
  • Contact Us
  • Donate

To Turkey’s next President: “Your term starts in critical times; protect and strengthen media freedom.”

0
The short URL of the present article is: https://cartoonistsrights.org/JenDP
Share

Today CRNI is a co-signatory to an open letter urging the next president of Turkey to reform and improve working conditions for journalists and media workers in Turkey.


Your term starts in critical times. Freedom of expression in particular has declined drastically in the last couple of years in your country. To this day, more than 150 journalists remain in prison, thousands of critical thought leaders have lost their jobs and a large number of them have left the country.

We, the undersigned international freedom of expression and professional organisations, ask you to prioritise the following points in the upcoming term to uphold the rule of law and to protect and strengthen media freedom and independent journalism in Turkey:

– release all journalists who have been imprisoned for exercising their right to freedom of expression and their journalistic work and drop all charges against them.

– restore the impartiality of the judiciary and ensure the functioning of the Constitutional Court by refraining from exerting any political pressure on it and guaranteeing the implementation of its decisions.

– reform the system of criminal law that is currently being abused in order to prosecute and jail journalists, specifically the Penal Code and the Anti-Terror Law, which are among the main obstacles to freedom of the press and freedom of expression in Turkey.

– de-centralise and end state control of the regulation of media. Let media policy and media regulation processes be implemented by journalist associations, media representatives and academics, in compliance with the jurisprudence of the ECtHR.

– support the independence and pluralism of the media by redesigning ownership restrictions, support public broadcasting media to become free from political and economic interference, ensure media pluralism by subsidising small independent local media. Legal, political and administrative measures must be adopted to ensure free and fair competition in the media.

– reform and monitor the Press and Advertising Agency (Basın İlan Kurumu) to ensure that independent newspapers are not deprived of public advertising revenue. The appointment of media and internet regulatory bodies such as RTÜK and BTK should be transparent and must answer to the principles of media independence and freedom.


Read the full text and see all the co-signatories on the European Federation of Journalist’s website.

To Report a Cartoonist in Danger  Email Cartoonists Rights Network

The short URL of the present article is: https://cartoonistsrights.org/JenDP
Previous
Ramón: “I never felt alone, but cannot forget the moans of people who were being tortured.”
Next
Zunar: “Now they have changed the government, what am I going to draw?”

#IndexAwards2019 winner in “Campaigning” category

https://youtu.be/UOjkQdP9AlM

A proud partner in the Cartooning Global Forum

https://youtu.be/MOfvPPtYLWs

Thanks to our founder & retiring director, Dr Robert Russell

https://vimeo.com/363032987?loop=0

Support CRNI via Paypal

or while shopping on Amazon

Categories

GDPR

Visitors to this site based in the EU – please be aware this site uses Cookies. Full details in our Privacy Policy.