Journalist rights watchdog urges Turkey to ‘stop harassing journalists’

Journalist rights watchdog urges Turkey to ‘stop harassing journalists’

Author: Fri, 2020-10-23 17:49

LONDON: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has urged Turkey to "stop harassing journalists and prosecuting them on trumped up charges,“ following a series of "baseless and harassing" charges against reporters.

The NGO, which is dedicated to protecting the rights of journalists and their free expression worldwide, highlighted a number of recent court cases involving reporters in the country.

On Thursday, the CPJ said, a Turkish court convicted freelance journalist Sabiha Temizkan of "making terrorist propaganda,“ and sentenced her to 15 months in prison for a tweet made in 2014.

She tweeted a news headline about the fall of an Iraqi town to Daesh, and said that she forgot to add the link to the story. The court argued that the story's headline violated the law.

The day before Temizkan's sentencing, on