As Turks protest against the detention of opposition leader Ekrem Imamoglu, the government is going for a news blackout – blocking social media accounts and arresting journalists.
As people took to the streets all over Turkey for a seventh evening on Tuesday, braving the tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons of the riot police to protest against the arrest of opposition figurehead Ekrem Imamoglu, the government was doing its best to prevent people from learning via social media about what was happening.
Seven hundred accounts on X were blocked, including those of journalists, media houses, civil society organisations and student groups, according to Baris Altintas, co-chair of the Media and Law Studies Association, MLSA.
The blocked X accounts included those of independent news outlet Bia.net, with 365,000 followers, and journalist Erk Acarer, with 1.2 million followers.
Meanwhile internet restrictions left many digital platforms, including X, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and others, inaccessible for more than two days when protests erupted.
“During the first two days of the operation against Imamoglu and the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, the internet was virtually unusable,” Izel Sezer, board member of DISK Basin-Is, one of the largest unions of journalists and media workers in Turkey, told BIRN.
“We had to download a VPN to carry out all our broadcasts and posts. At the same time, access from Turkey was blocked for many institutions and individual accounts sharing content from the protests,” she added.
The authorities have moved against the mass media as well. At least seven journalists who were reporting on the protests are among nearly 1,500 people detained by police so far. They include award-winning Agence France-Presse photo-reporter Yasin Akgul and freelancer photo-reporter Bulent Kilic. The reason given was violation of the Law on Meetings and Demonstrations.
The Turkish Journalists’ Association, TGC, said in a written statement on Wednesday that the government is fabricating charges against journalists for doing their job. “Trying to intimidate them with prison sentences and subjecting them to violence by security forces is unacceptable,” it said.
Since the arrest on March 19 of Imamoglu, the Mayor of Istanbul, who is widely seen as the main political challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, hundreds of thousands of people have been protesting.
But Altintas said that the government wants to restrict coverage of the demonstrations. “Since the first day of the events, we have seen an attempt to suppress the press, first by getting access block bans on journalists’ accounts and accounts that follow the protests and secondly, unfortunately, brutality towards press members at the protest site,” she said.
Imamoglu, the candidate of the opposition Republican People’s Party, CHP, for the next presidential elections, due by 2028 at the latest, is being held on corruption and terror charges. The CHP and other opposition parties accuse the government of using politically motivated legal tactics against him.
Digital curbs hide rights breaches
Court decisions have blocked access to sites and placed restrictions on internet connections, targeting journalists, media houses, civil society and even ordinary people.
Sezer said the purpose was clear – “to suppress critical voices and limit public reaction to government policies”.
Right after the court decisions to block a series of accounts on X, the social media company made the accounts invisible in Turkey. It has said it will appeal the decision – an unexpected move, as the digital platform under Elon Musk has previous complied with requests from Ankara.
“We object to multiple court orders from the Turkish Information and Communication Technologies Authority to block over 700 accounts of news organisations, journalists, political figures, students, and others within Turkey,” X’s Global Government Affairs department said in a statement.
However, Altintas said that X’s appeal will have little real impact as the accounts were already blocked while the events were happening.
“It’s not very important if X appeals or not. They are complying instantly, and this impacts our right to information right now. It doesn’t matter if an account withholding is removed six months later,” she said.
“My feeling is that they only said they will challenge the bans following criticism about their compliance,” she added.
Sezer said that with these digital measures, the government is aiming to conceal civil rights violations on the ground.
“We know that the specific targeting of journalists during the protests and subsequent arrests aims to restrict news coverage of the demonstrations and prevent the public from witnessing police violence,” Sezer said.
“The common factor among the seven journalists who were detained in house raids and later arrested yesterday is that they had documented police brutality during the protests,” she added.
Sezer said there were also irregularities in the court case against the arrested journalists.
“In the investigation file, we saw that our colleagues were effectively framed. Although the arrested journalists had press cards around their necks and were holding cameras or microphones, the file contains only photos showing their upper bodies. In these images, neither their press cards nor their equipment is visible,” she said.
“It is clear that the way this investigation file was prepared, along with the arrests, is intended to intimidate journalists,” she added.
Journalists targeted by courts
Altintas noted that even before the current protests, media freedoms in Turkey have been “deteriorating rapidly”.
“The judiciary is used to silence journalist with accusations of terrorism, spreading fake news, insults and defamation being levelled against journalists routinely. Just last year, more than 300 journalists were on trial for the news they reported or photos they took,” she said.
She also noted that RTUK, the Turkish regulatory agency for radio and TV broadcasts, has attempted to limit media coverage of the protests against the government.
“A warning from RTUK said that TV stations reporting on that protests should be careful about their broadcasts,” she said.
RTUK and the government accuse the opposition and media of disinformation.
“Unable to respond to any of the judiciary’s allegations, the CHP leadership attempted to cover up the scandal by inciting people to take to the streets and create chaos in the country,” Erdogan said on Wednesday, referring to the court cases against Imamoglu and 45 others.
Media outlets that are reporting the protests have been threatened.
“We have issued warnings; from now on, no further warnings will be given,” RTUK’s president, Ebubekir Sahin, said on Tuesday, threatening fines, investigations and court cases.
“Journalists face both physical and legal threats during the protests. Police interventions make it difficult for them to work in the field, and despite showing their press cards, some are detained or have their equipment confiscated. Additionally, legal pressures and ongoing investigations have become tools to intimidate journalists,” Sezer said.
Some journalists have also been physically assaulted.
“To give direct examples of physical violence: on the evening of March 23, journalist Tansel Can, who was covering the protests in Turkey for Russian news channel RT, was targeted and beaten by multiple police officers while trying to record police violence … He was also pepper-sprayed in the face at close range and had to receive medical treatment at a hospital,” Sezer said.
“Another example is journalist Zisan Gur, who was arrested while covering the protests. During her detention, police officers broke her nose,” she added.
Gur is also one of the journalists who has been detained by police. Gur was released by a court in Istanbul on Thursday under judicial control measures.
Sezer expressed concern that the deteriorating situation could have long-term consequences for media freedom in the country.
“Journalists fulfil a public duty and increasing pressure on the press and the silencing of independent media mean restricting the public’s right to access and share news. The arbitrary arrest of journalists, censorship practices, and self-censorship illustrate how deeply this process has progressed,” she said.
“If this blockade of the media continues, press freedom in Turkey could be nearly eradicated.”
Source: BIRN
