Turkey orders Interpol arrest warrants for two prominent journalists in exile
Journalism in Turkey has come under renewed scrutiny after an Istanbul court issued an international arrest warrant for two prominent writers living overseas.
In a hearing against journalists linked to the Cumhuriyet newspaper, the 27th High Criminal Court said it would request the issuance of Interpol “red notices” for Can Dundar and Ilhan Tanir. The order notifies all Interpol member states that the individuals have pending arrest warrants.
Mr Dundar, the newspaper’s former editor-in-chief, and Mr Tanir, its former Washington correspondent, live in Germany and the United States respectively.
In April, more than a dozen Cumhuriyet staff were convicted of supporting groups such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the far-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front and the Gulenist movement, which Ankara holds responsible for a 2016 coup attempt. Turkey lists all three as terrorist groups.
Mr Dundar, Turkey’s most prominent journalist in exile, dismissed the court’s demand for the notices, and said the agency would disregard it because “they know the real intentions” of Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkish courts have called for Mr Dundar to be extradited on at least two occasions since he went to Europe in the wake of his May 2016 conviction for revealing state secrets in a Cumhuriyet article documenting the transport of arms to Syria by Turkey’s spy agency.
Mr Tanir edits the English output of Ahval news website, which Turkey banned in March.
Henri Barkey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in the US, warned that they faced the risk of arrest in countries willing to acquiesce to Ankara’s demands.
“The truth is that they have to be careful about where they travel,” said Prof Barkey, who faces a warrant issued in November over claims he was involved in plotting the coup.
“Turkey is playing games – it’s a way of putting pressure on them, saying ‘we’re here and we won’t leave you alone’.”
Since the July 2016 attempted coup, Turkey has emerged as the world’s top jailer of journalists with 73 behind bars last year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Reporters Without Borders places the country in 157th place for press freedom out of 180 nations. The Turkey Purge website says more than 300 journalists were among tens of thousands jailed after the coup, while 189 media outlets were closed.
Among the latest to face criminal charges over their reporting are Cumhuriyet journalists. Alican Uludag and Duygu Guvenc have been accused of denigrating the judiciary by suggesting the release of US pastor Andrew Brunson this month was linked to a backroom deal with Washington.
Despite the number of journalists in jail, Mr Erdogan has insisted that freedom of expression is protected under his tenure. But the closure or takeover of opposition media outlets has given him a near-monopoly of the media.
In March, Turkey’s largest independent media group, which included CNN Turk, Hurriyet newspaper and Dogan News Agency, was bought out by Demiroren Holding. Journalist Kadri Gursel said the purchase placed most of the media “under the direct political control of President Erdogan”.
The death of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul has highlighted the threat to journalists. Much of the reporting has been based on reports in pro-government newspapers such as Sabah and
Yeni Safak that rely on anonymous security sources.
Despite these outlets’ longstanding reputation for running far-fetched claims, their reporting on the Khashoggi case has been widely repeated in leading western newspapers. “The fact that The New York
Times and others haven’t questioned the veracity of their sources is very cavalier,” Prof Barkey said. “Yeni Safak and
Sabah run outlandish stories.”