Turkish government tightens grip on dissenting media

PanARMENIAN.Net -

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has stopped sending Foreign Ministry statements and phone text messages to a number of media outlets known to be critical of the government, including the Today's Zaman and Zaman dailies as well as the private Cihan news agency.

The ministry excluded all the journalists affiliated with these media outlets from the statement distribution list as of Nov 3, Today’s Zaman reports.

Bilgiç, who took office in January 2014, has held only one “press conference,” on Nov 4, but did not invite a number of media outlet representatives.

Correspondents from Zaman and Cihan were stopped in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building by ministry personnel. When a Zaman correspondent asked the personnel who it was that had ordered them to stop the journalists, they replied they were following the orders of their superiors and the state.

Withholding press accreditation to bar journalists from attending events appears to have become common practice in Turkey, Today’s Zaman says. Several media outlets were not granted permission to cover President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's inauguration ceremony on Aug 28, for example. The Prime Ministry and Ministry of Foreign Affairs are the most recent government institutions to have imposed an accreditation ban on certain media outlets that are not pro-governmental.

A journalist from Cihan was asked recently to leave the hall where Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu's wife, Sare Davutoğlu, was delivering a speech about women victimized by war.

Journalists from the Zaman Media Group, the İpek Media Group and Samanyolu were barred from entering the Prime Ministry building to attend a press briefing of Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç after a Cabinet meeting on Nov 3.

Several journalist associations in Turkey, including the Diplomacy Correspondents Association (DMD), the Parliamentary Correspondents Association and the Economy Correspondents Association, and journalist unions issued a statement calling the government to end the bans.