Union: Violence against women journalists is on the increase

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

The Women and LGBTI+ Commission of the Journalists Union of Turkey (TGS) released a report about violence against women and LGBTI+ journalists on the occasion of November 25 International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Members of the commission and journalists attended the meeting at the union's office in Cağaloğlu, İstanbul, to announce the findings of the report.

Videos showing violence against women and LGBTI+ journalists were also displayed at the meeting.

"We are aware of the witch hunt"

Reading out the findings of the report, Çağrı Sarı, a TGS executive, said the following:
Ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, we are concerned that we will experience more of what is shown in these videos, after the disinformation law, which we call the censorship law, was passed in the parliament.

* With the censorship law, the public's right to information is prevented. The detention of 11 journalists and the arrest of nine of them 10 days after the parliament passed the law is proof of that.

* Five of the nine journalists arrested on October 25 were women. Women journalists are exposed to physical, verbal or psychological violence during news coverage every day. According to data from the Coalition for Women in Journalism, a quarter of all cases of violence against women and LGBTI+ journalists in the world occurred in Türkiye. This rate increased by 43.9 percent in 2022.

* Among the European and OECD countries, Türkiye has the highest rate of women who have experienced physical or sexual violence from men.

* A while ago, we carried out a study. We talked to 13 journalists from different provinces. One of our questions was, "During which type of demonstrations you are subjected to violence the most?"

* In the answers, it was said, "I can't say this or that type of demonstration anymore. There is arbitrariness."

* Twelve of the 13 journalists agreed that violence has increased and become more frequent over the past six months.

* November 25 is not only a day when we object to violence against women. It is also a day when we defend women who are subjected to violence because of their jobs.

* We don't want to report violence against women anymore. We don't want to suffer violence while reporting.

* Our struggle to prevent violence and harassment in working life continues. In 2019, we implemented the Violence and Harassment Convention No. 190, adopted by the International Labor Organization (ILO) at the International Labor Conference, at workplaces with which we signed a collective bargaining agreement. With the work we continued in 2022, we implemented policy documents in four workplaces in order to ensure the safety and peace of women journalists, and added it as an article to the collective bargaining agreement in two workplaces. (EMK/VK)