Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Se\u00e1n Crowe TD, has strongly criticised the lack of press of freedom in Turkey. Crowe’s comments come after the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) made a presentation to the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee on the crackdown on media organisations and the arrests of journalists in Turkey.<\/p>\n
Deputy Crowe said:<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to thank the NUJ for giving an informative presentation on the repression that their journalist colleagues in Turkey are facing.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince the attempted coup over 130 media outlets have been closed and 2,500 journalists and media workers have lost their jobs. At least 90 journalists are in jail and 330 have had their press accreditation removed.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn Monday, 31 October, the Turkish police launched a mass operation against the liberal newspaper Cumhuriyet, one of the last remaining sources of independent news and information in Turkey. Police arrested at least 13 journalists at the newspaper, including the editor-in-chief. Last year this paper bravely published information on how Turkey was militarily supporting Syrian jihadists through covert channels.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn August the Turkish Government forced the pro-Kurdish \u00d6zg\u00fcr G\u00fcndem daily newspaper to close. The 25 year old daily has faced a barrage of State intimidation and violence before it was forcibly closed down after a heavy handed police raid.<\/p>\n
\u201cFour journalists have been charged for participating in a solidarity campaign with \u00d6zg\u00fcr G\u00fcndem and writers, editors, and board members will face charges of links to Kurdish militants on 15 December.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s clear that the Turkish Government is using the attempted coup to achieve its long term goal of quelling and silencing any independent or critical voices in the country. Many of those who have been arrested and detained are at the opposite end of the political spectrum when compared with those who supposedly carried out the attempted coup.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Turkish Government\u2019s attacks and intensified crackdown on the media needs to stop.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Se\u00e1n Crowe TD, has strongly criticised the lack of press of freedom in Turkey. Crowe’s comments come after the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) made a presentation to the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee on the crackdown on media organisations and the arrests of journalists in Turkey. Deputy Crowe said: \u201cI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[134,267,136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kurds","category-press-freedom","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2883,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2882\/revisions\/2883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}