On Tuesday Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stopped sending official statements via e-mail and text messages to leading media outlets such as Today’s Zaman, Zaman, and Cihan, claiming that they are anti-Government.
Last week, the outlets were blocked from a briefing with Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc and a press conference by Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tanju Bilgic.
Meanwhile, Turkish prosecutors filed a criminal lawsuit against Harun Cumen, the managing editor and legal representative of Zaman, Turkey’s largest daily newspaper, calling for a 17-year prison sentence.
The prosecutors acted over a series of articles about a speech by the leader of the opposition Republican People’s Party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, alleging Government corruption. They claim that Cumen disclosed an alleged phone call between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his son Bilal in which the two discussed movement of assets to prevent their seizure.
Cumen is also being charged with membership in an undisclosed illegal organization.
In December 2013, prosecutors detained senior business and political figures, including the sons of four Cabinet Ministers, over the corruption allegations. Critics of the Government claim that the allegations are being swept aside, with Ankara turning against any judiciary officials, police officers, or journalists who pursue the cases.
An initial investigation into Cumen was dropped in May over a lack of legal grounds presented by President Erdogan’s lawyers, but the 2nd Penal Court of Peace in Istanbul reversed the decision to allow a new verdict on the validity of the prosecution’s collection of evidence.
Cumen has said that many Turkish newspapers reported on the leaked phone conversations:
This is an arbitrary legal action to intimidate free press. Reporting statements made by the main opposition party leader in Parliament about events that have implications for the public is just a routine job of the press media.
The Turkish Journalists Federation criticized the Government crackdown on independent media. Chairman Atilla Sertel explained in a press release:
This judicial proceeding is itself an action of intimidating press… If an individual, a party chairman speaks to the public, this naturally becomes a topic for a news report. How could it be deemed an unlawful act? Can there be such a non-sense? If they [the government] want to get rid of dissident reporters then let the government have all the dissidents executed.