Court blocks access to 130 news articles about Erdoğan's former lawyer

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A court has blocked access to 130 online news articles and other content about a former lawyer for President and Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Mustafa Doğan İnal.

Filing a petition with the İstanbul Anadolu 3rd Penal Judgeship of Peace, İnal had alleged that his personal rights had been violated and demanded the judgeship block access to the said content.

The judgeship stated that the articles could not be considered within the scope of the freedom of news, thought or criticism because there was no news or proof that the statements in the articles were accurate and censored the content.

However, the judgeship did not ask the relevant outlets whether they had proof of the claims in the articles, which were about the claims that İnal had been involved in "bribery negotiations."

Among the censored articles are an article on bianet and an article on the Media Monitoring Database, a bianet project for tracking violations of press freedom. The bianet article was about a lawsuit that İnal had filed against journalists İzel Sezer and Doğan Ergün of the İleri Haber news portal. The English version of the article was also censored.

İnal had also filed a criminal complaint against those who published the report on bianet and Nazan Özcan, the then-editor-in-chief of bianet, had been summoned to give a statement.

The other news portals whose articles were censored include İleri Haber, Evrensel, T24, Gazete Duvar, BirGün, Cumhuriyet, Independent, KRT TV, Artı Gerçek, Gerçek Gündem, Mezopotamya Ajansı, Nupel, Kronos, Yeni İstiklal, toplumsal.com.tr, serbestiyet.com, internethaber.com, sondakika.com, medyafaresi.com, medyayazar.com, bursadabugun.com

Websites tracking violations of freedom of expression and trials of journalists are also on the list: fade.org.tr, mlsaturkey.com, expressioninterrupted.com, diclefiratgazeteciler.org and susma24.com.

Some Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Ekşi Sözlük posts and YouTube videos were also censored.

Over 5,000 articles were censored in 2020

According to a report by the Freedom of Expression Association, 236 penal judgeships of peace issued 819 access blocking orders for 5,645 web addresses in 2020. The outlets have removed 4,620, or 81 percent, of those articles.

In addition, access to a total of 58,809 websites was blocked in 2020. In the last 14 years, 467,011 websites from Turkey were blocked by 764 different institutions (courts and administrative institutions). The association has not yet published its 2021 report. (HA/VK)