Kurdish Reporter Faces Jail Time in Turkey for Twitter and Facebook Posts
by Efe Kerem Sozeri
Global Voices, March 9, 2016 23:44 GMT 1
https://globalvoices.org/2016/03/09/kurdish-reporter-faces-jail-time-in-turkey-for-twitter-and-facebook-posts/print/
On 26 July 2015, Turkish police special forces stormed Gazi Cemevi, a place
of worship for Alawites, with tear gas and rifles at Istanbul’s Gazi
neighbourhood. The operation aimed at confiscating the body of Gunay
Ozarslan, who was killed in a police raid two days before. Public funerals
are a form of protest for the minorities in Turkey.
Rights groups have long been reporting [1] Turkey’s ‘trajectory towards
authoritarianism’. The story of a jailed Kurdish journalist highlights the
plight of the two groups--minority ethnic Kurds and media workers--that have
been hit hardest by this tendency.
Hayri Tunc, a Kurdish reporter from independent news website Jiyan [2], is
facing years in jail for seven tweets, 11 Facebook posts and two YouTube
videos.
Based on material in the posts, an Istanbul court charged placed him in
February on pre-trial detention in Silivri prison [3] on charges of
‘terrorism propaganda’, ‘abetting criminal acts’ and ‘glorifying criminal
acts’.
Taking into consideration multiple counts, the charges arrayed could mean
over 20 years in jail if he is convicted, although given Tunc has no prior
criminal record, any sentence would likely be smaller.
Until recently, Tunc’s main area of work has been uncovering stories of
exclusion and struggle in the slums of Istanbul where the Kurdish minority
has resided for decades.
As a video-journalist he excels at documenting clashes between Leftist
protesters and the Turkish police.
Videos from his own YouTube channel [4] have reached thousands of viewers
and have been featured in major outlets such as Russia's RT and France 24.
His personal Twitter feed [5] doubles as an independent newswire for 13.6K
followers, thanks to his reporting from the other side of the Kurdish
conflict.
But since last summer, when a low intensity conflict between the Kurdish
armed group PKK and the Turkish state escalated into all-out guerrilla
warfare, the Turkish government imposed a blanket censorship over Kurdish
media [6] by banning over a hundred independent news websites, including
Jiyan [7].
(Disclaimer: the author of this report is an editor for Jiyan).
Among the subjects of Turkey's numerous removal requests to Twitter were key
Kurdish journalists, including Hayri Tunc.
Tunc’s account featured three times in such requests according to data
reported by cyber rights activist and professor of law at Bilgi University
in Istanbul Yaman Akdeniz: first in August [8], then in September [9], and
once more in January [10].
Such persistence has helped Turkey become the top Twitter censor worldwide
[11].
Facebook is less transparent in revealing government requests, but Tunc
reported he lost access to his account several times, while Instagram
removed his photos [12] that documented clashes in Istanbul.
But when the government’s repeated censorship requests failed to silence
Tunc, mainly because Twitter usually fails to comply [13] with removal
requests relating to journalistic content, police raided his home in October
and detained him on grounds of ‘being a member of a terrorist organisation’
and ‘spreading terrorist propaganda’.
He was even accused of [14] ‘polytheism’ during a police interrogation.
It is clear that Tunc is being punished for reporting on the conflict in
real time, with tweets [15] such as this one, from July 2015:
-- hayritunc (@hayriituncc) July 28, 2015 [15]
YDG-H [youth branch of PKK] stated that they have launched a move to
liberate Alipa?a in Amed [Kurdish name for Diyarbak?r, East of Turkey]
That particular tweet provided visual evidence of the coming urban warfare,
just a month before a Turkish governor issued a curfew in the town.
In December, he documented in a YouTube video [17] how such months-long
curfews in the East had sparked clashes with the police (from 1:45) in the
Kurdish neighbourhoods of Istanbul.
All these materials are included in the indictment bill, reviewed by this
author, as evidence of ‘terrorism propaganda’ and ‘abetting and glorifying
criminal acts’.
This is not the first time that a journalist reporting on PKK is being
jailed in Turkey.
Last August, Vice News reporters Jake Hanrahan, Philip Pendlebury, and their
colleague Mohammed Ismael Rasool were detained on similar ‘terrorism charges
[18]’; Hanrahan and Pendlebury were deported while Rasool was released on
bail after spending more than four months in jail [19].
But Kurdish journalists in Turkey face these threats on a daily basis.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least seven [20]
Kurdish journalists were arrested in Turkey in the last three months and
another died [21] in a basement in Cizre, a Kurdish town under curfew, while
covering efforts to help people wounded during the clashes.
Regarding Turkey’s prosecution of journalists on ‘terrorism charges’, CPJ
wrote [22] earlier that "broadly worded anti-terror and penal code statutes
have allowed Turkish authorities to conflate the coverage of banned groups
and investigation of sensitive topics with outright terrorism or other
anti-state activity."
After Tunc’s arrest, CPJ further warned [23] that "Turkey has recently
renewed its practice of imprisoning critical journalists in retaliation for
their work."
When the number of banned websites [24] in Turkey surpassed 100,000 last
October, internet freedom groups demanded [25] Turkish government cease
online censorship of independent news organizations and citizen journalists.
Before this massive censorship began, the same government was the worst
jailer of journalists for two consecutive years, in 2012 [26] and 2013 [27].
The case of Hayri Tunc reminds us how important independent journalists are
for Turkey, how crucial it is that they spread news via social media, but
also how easy it is for Turkey’s government to censor and jail them without
serious reprieve from Ankara's Western partners.
The first hearing of Tunc's case will be held on March 11 in Istanbul.
Article printed from Global Voices: https://globalvoices.org
URL to article:
https://globalvoices.org/2016/03/09/kurdish-reporter-faces-jail-time-in-turkey-for-twitter-and-facebook-posts/
URLs in this post:
[1] reporting:
http://www.voanews.com/content/turkey-human-rights-watch-report/3165445.html
[2] Jiyan: https://jiyan.us/
[3] Silivri prison:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Silivri+Prison/@41.0498336,27.8643269,9z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x14b517cdca828183:0x66864bb384ccd75b?shorturl=1
[4] YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/korkulukkitabevi/videos
[5] Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/hayriituncc
[6] blanket censorship over Kurdish media:
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-blocks-kurdish-websites-as-twitter-and-facebook-slows-down.aspx?pageID=238&nid=85917
[7] including Jiyan:
http://bianet.org/english/media/168641-5-websites-blocked-in-a-day
[8] August: https://twitter.com/cyberrights/status/634107975259394048
[9] September: https://twitter.com/cyberrights/status/650757460941275136
[10] January: https://www.facebook.com/hayritnc/posts/584718001682522
[11] top Twitter censor worldwide:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/burcukarakas/how-turkey-became-the-top-censor-of-twitter-accounts-worldwi
[12] removed his photos:
https://twitter.com/hayriituncc/status/677205562367590400
[13] fails to comply:
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/Default.aspx?pageID=238&nID=92387&NewsCatID=339
[14] accused of:
http://www.todayszaman.com/national_columnist-hayri-tunc-released-as-jiyanorg-news-portal-blocked_402438.html
[15] tweets: https://twitter.com/hayriituncc/status/626118897616334848
[16] pic.twitter.com/iVvgjKKJ36: http://t.co/iVvgjKKJ36
[17] YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E0rAbAEy-M
[18] terrorism charges:
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/turkey-vice-journalists-explained/
[19] more than four months in jail:
https://news.vice.com/article/turkey-has-released-vice-news-journalist-mohammed-rasool-on-bail
[20] at least seven:
https://cpj.org/2016/02/turkish-police-arrest-journalist.php
[21] another died:
https://cpj.org/2016/02/journalist-trapped-and-injured-while-reporting-in-.php
[22] wrote:
https://www.cpj.org/2015/08/cpj-calls-for-the-release-of-vice-news-reporters-f.php
[23] warned:
https://cpj.org/2016/02/turkish-journalist-arrested-for-posts-on-social-me.php
[24] number of banned websites: https://engelliweb.com/
[25] demanded:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/10/29/open-letter-government-turkey-internet-blocking-and-free-expression
[26] 2012: https://www.cpj.org/imprisoned/2012.php
[27] 2013: https://www.cpj.org/imprisoned/2013.php
