WHY PROTECT RIGHTS OF JOURNALISTS?
FORMER US president Barack Obama warned at the 16th Nelson Mandela Lecture in Johannesburg this year that many states have no regard for human rights and instead prioritise their commercial interests. Obviously, the fundamental rule of international relations is the interests of states.
The same Obama met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo an seven times and spoke with him by phone on 15 occasions in 2012. They spent time discussing their daughters but there is no evidence that the then US president has ever raised human rights or press concerns in any of his meetings with Erdogan. But what about regional or international human rights courts and the well-funded global NGOs? Do they really extend a hand to “ordinary” journalists or media personnel?
It was shocking that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has rejected around 25 000 applications from Turkish citizens in relation to rights violations after the July 2016 coup attempt. Turkey’s leading human rights advocates and parliamentarian Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu accused the ECHR of being a commercial organisation which signed the agreement with Turkey’s governing AKP.
The Committee to Protect Journalist (CPJ) follows “the certain methodology” and does not recognise many jailed media members as journalists and does not assist them.
Hundreds of journalists are in jail because of the Anti-Terror Law. This law sees journalists as enemies of the state. According to CPJ’s 2012 report, 30% of journalists jailed in August 2012 were accused of taking part in anti-government plots or being members of outlawed political groups.
Turkey’s well-respected EU expert and journalist Selcuk Guntasli reported that many media institutions discriminate against journalists based on ideology and social class in Turkey. Guntasli highlighted that despite the fact that 124 journalists (out of 150) imprisoned are former Zaman colleagues or Kurdish journalists, EPJ barely mentioned them and mainly opts to assist those journalists from the secular elite class.
Obviously these double standards render many journalists helpless. This is evidenced by calls from journalists such as Ufuk Sanli who was arrested and jailed during the aftermath of a failed coup. Sanli says he wants press organisations not to forget him.
Recently, the New York-based Writers and Journalist Foundation released the report titled “Death in Custody – Right to Life in Turkish Prisons” and called on the international community to address human right violations.
They strongly urged Turkish authorities to ensure the right to life of persons within their jurisdiction. The UN, Council of Europe and other international and regional mechanisms show very weak responses for hundreds of thousands of victims of the coup and are not taking concrete action after WJF’s findings.
According to the report, by the end of August 2017, 668 children under the age of 6 were deprived of their liberty across Turkey with their mothers, detained or arrested as part of AKP’s crackdown on the Hizmet movement. Western states condemned these mass arrests and human rights violations in Turkey but when Erdogan jails Europeans, the same governments expend great effort to rescue their citizens. European government efforts to protect their citizens are very understandable, but what is sad is that international human rights bodies and NGOs discriminate against Turkish victims.
Many media houses discriminate against journalists based on social class in Turkey SELCUK GUNTASLI Journalist