Turkey Ranks 157th in Freedom of Press

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has announced its 2018 World Press Freedom Index, where Turkey has ranked the 157th among 180 countries. Turkey ranked the 155th in last year's index.

"Turkey is again the world's biggest prison for professional journalists"

In the index published today (April 25), the freedom of press in Turkey was evaluated as follows:

"The witch hunt waged by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government against its media critics has come to a head since an abortive coup in July 2016. A state of emergency has allowed the authorities to eliminate dozens of media outlets with the stroke of a pen, reducing pluralism to a handful of low-circulated and targeted publications. Turkey is again the world's biggest prison for professional journalists, with members of the press spending more than a year in prison before trial and long jail sentences becoming the new norm—in some cases, journalists are sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of a pardon. Detained journalists and closed media outlets are denied any effective legal recourse. The rule of law is a fading memory under the now all-powerful president. Even constitutional court rulings are no longer automatically implemented. Censorship of websites and online social media has also reached unprecedented levels."

Russia has ranked the 148th

While Turkey has ranked the 157th among 180 countries, the rankings of Iraq, Egypt and Iran have been announced as 160, 161 and 164 respectively. In the World Press Freedom Index, where Cyrups has ranked 25th, Greece the 74th and Northern Cyprus the 77th, the ranking of Russia has been announced as 148.

As for the top ranks of the index, Norway has ranked the first and it has been followed by Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland and Switzerland. Germany has ranked the 15th, France the 33rd, Britain the 40th and the US the 45 in the index. (ŞA/SD)