Freedom of Speech Archives - Page 5 of 5 - Advocates of Silenced Turkey

HRW report: Turkey’s silencing of media, assaults on press freedom shield state from scrutiny

A report by US-based rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) released on Thursday said that Turkey’s government has all but silenced independent media in an effort to prevent scrutiny or criticism of its ruthless crackdown on perceived enemies.

The assault on critical journalism sharpened in 2014 but accelerated after a failed coup attempt in July 2016, denying Turkey’s population access to a regular flow of independent information from domestic newspapers, radio and television stations about developments in the country, HRW said.

Belgian justice minister orders close scrutiny of Diyanet mosques amid spying claims

Belgian Justice Minister Koen Geens has announced that he has ordered security and intelligence units in the country to closely monitor mosques operated by the Turkish Religious Affairs Directorate, or Diyanet, amid reports that the Diyanet asked imams to spy and inform on Belgians of Turkish origin suspected of being active in the faith-based Gülen movement.

Turkey censors textbooks that include word ‘Pennsylvania’

As part of an ongoing purge of anything that could remotely be associated with Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen, who has been in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, Turkey’s Education Ministry has destroyed 892,000 textbooks that include the word “Pennsylvania” on the basis of it promoting “terrorist propaganda.”

Hürriyet’s Zeyrek replaced after assassination remark

The Hürriyet daily’s Ankara representative, Deniz Zeyrek, was replaced on Wednesday by the Ankara bureau chief of CNN Türk, Hande Fırat, who aired a FaceTime message from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the evening of a coup attempt in July, amid debates over the assassination on Monday of Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov.

Turkey recalls spying religious attaché from Netherlands[spying]

The Turkish government has recalled Yusuf Acar, the religious attaché of the Turkish government in the Netherlands, who recently admitted to spying on followers of the faith-based Gülen movement, Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders announced on Wednesday.

The Dutch Telegraaf daily last week published the remarks of Acar, who admitted that he had collected the names of people who sympathize with Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen and passed it on to the regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“As an attaché, I collected information that anyone can find on the Internet,” he said to the newspaper. He said he found the information on alleged members of “FETÖ” in the Netherlands.