Civil Rights - Freedom of Speech in Turkey

Asher Forman
Mr. Roddy
IHSS
2 April 2019
Freedom of Speech in Turkey
    At the moment, the president of Turkey is Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Although, many people aren't a fan of this and have taken action against him. For example, the military and tons more people began to rebel against him to ultimately try and take him out of office in 2016. The people of Turkey are split up evenly on whether they love or hate Erdoğan. The half of Turkey that hates Erdoğan dislikes him because of how much he abuses his presidential powers. He essentially ignores everyone and only does what he wants to do. When people tried to fight back against him, Erdoğan's loyal military ended up fighting and killing around 250 of the other rebelling military. The people that didn't die in 2016 were sentenced to trial for the illegal crimes they committed. There were thousands of people that ended up going to prison and others barely escaping conviction. In 2018, Erdoğan was re-elected into office. Since so many people don't like him, many journalists were making news pieces or articles on their opinions about him. With his presidential power, Erdoğan put people that were just exercising their civil right to freedom of speech in jail. He put these people in jail or detention on charges for terrorism even though a lot of their writing doesn't exactly relate to harm or terrorism. This still didn't stop Erdoğan from punishing these people. Tons of journalists were put in prison for many years and some for their entire life. Some people convicted with these charges and accusations were able to appeal to retry their luck in court again. Few got out, while many stayed in prison and had to suffer their unfair sentence (World Report). This now goes into question about whether Turkey is really a democracy or more of a dictatorship. Was Erdoğan using his power to arrest these people on very little evidence, so that no one in Turkey would think or write bad things about him? Do the Turkish people who think highly of him realize that what he is doing is wrong, or do they blindly trust in what Erdoğan does? As many people still dislike him, there will be more and more journalists who post bad press about him. Will Erdoğan use his power to put more people in jail, or decide to take a different approach? Overall, this whole crisis in Turkey is a clear representation of the suppression of one of the fundamental civil rights being freedom of speech.







Work Cited
“World Report 2019: Rights Trends in Turkey.” Human Rights Watch, 28 Feb. 2019, www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/turkey. 2 Apr. 2019.

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