Prisoners tell of solitary confinement and maltreatment after being caught up in ‘Kafkaesque’ media purge

Scores of imprisoned Turkish journalists face a Kafkaesque nightmare of legal limbo, farcical charge sheets, maltreatment and even solitary confinement in the country that locks up more reporters than any other in the world.

A series of Guardian interviews and written exchanges with several of those jailed as a result of a sweeping media crackdown found a huge mental burden on the incarcerated, as well as tough social and intellectual restrictions.

“I have been broken and twisted in more ways than I can imagine,” says the recently released novelist Aslı Erdoğan (no relation to the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan), who spent five days in solitary confinement at the start of four months of pretrial detention.

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Mehmet Altan, a journalist awaiting trial for supposedly attempting to bring down the government describes his life in prison as an environment “where no needs of a mature mind are met. It is like wearing striped pyjamas. It is a very narrow life without any joy or feeling to it.”

“Never have I seen this much wrongdoing,” said Barış Yarkadaş, an MP in the opposition Republican People’s party (CHP) and a member of the media commission that monitors journalists’ arrests and provides them with legal aid.



The media crackdown followed a coup attempt last July that left more than 200 people dead and more than 1,400 injured.

The purges have led to tens of thousands of civil servants, members of the police, military and judiciary as well as academics and journalists being either detained or dismissed for alleged links to the network of Fethullah Gülen, an exiled preacher blamed for instigating the coup.

Opponents of President Erdoğan say the purges have turned into a witch-hunt against dissidents in government, academia and the media, to stifle them before a historic referendum in April that would grant sweeping powers to the president.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, at a recent rally to persuade people to vote for constitutional changes that would entrench his power Photograph: Turkish President Press Office Handout/EPA

The CHP says 152 journalists are behind bars and 173 media outlets have been shut since the coup attempt, including newspapers, magazines, radio stations, websites and news agencies. More than 2,500 journalists have been laid off because of the closures and 800 have had their press cards revoked, with many also having their passports confiscated.

The government only acknowledges that 30 journalists are in prison.



In November, a dozen journalists at Cumhuriyet, Turkey’s oldest newspaper and a bastion of opposition to Erdoğan, were arrested and most have remained in custody without formal indictments. The government has threatened to appoint a trustee board to manage the publication’s affairs in a move that would silence its critics.

Free media in Turkey is in its death throes Amnesty International

Many Kurdish outlets have been shut and often recreated under different names after accusations of propaganda on behalf of the PKK. Kurdish journalists have been repeatedly arrested while reporting on demonstrations against the government, only to be quickly released after one hearing, in a practice seen as an attempt to intimidate them.

Last month Deniz Yücel, a German-Turkish journalist who works for Die Welt newspaper, was formally arrested because of his reporting on the hacking of the personal emails of Berat Albayrak, the energy minister and Erdoğan’s son-in-law.

“Turkey now has the dubious honour of being the world’s biggest jailer of journalists, and free media in the country is in its death throes,” Amnesty International said after Yucel’s arrest.

Aydın Doğan, head of the Doğan Group, which publishes one of the country’s leading newspapers, the Hürriyet, was recently summoned to court after an article published by the paper indicated there was discomfort in the military about what was happening politically – a move interpreted as a call for the military to intervene in politics.

Some observers have described the accusations levelled against some leading journalists as bizarre. Ahmet Şik, an investigative journalist who is in prison, was accused of propaganda on behalf of the Gülen network, even though he authored a book called The Imam’s Army that exposed the group’s corrupt practices.

“It’s a bit like arresting Martin Luther King for being a member of the Klan,” said one rights worker.

Cumhuriyet has also often reported on the damaging influence of the Gülenists, who once shared power with the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP). When the director of the newspaper’s board, Akın Atalay, returned from overseas to challenge the order for his arrest he was detained because investigators determined he was a flight risk.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters hold copies of Cumhuriyet outside the newspaper’s headquarters in Istanbul on 1 November. Photograph: Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images

“We all know this is absurdity,” said Yarkadaş, the CHP lawmaker who recently visited the Cumhuriyet journalists in prison. “This is not rule of law. This is undermining the law.

“The government is saying if you oppose the regime we are planning to plant in Turkey, you will find yourself in prison and we will isolate you from the outside world.”

Media outlets also face financial pressures. Monitors say the government is leaning on businesses to avoid advertising in opposition newspapers in order to curtail their revenues.

The result has been that the vast majority of mainstream outlets are either openly supportive of the AKP government or are mildly centrist in their politics. The only major opposition outlets are Cumhuriyet and Halk TV, a station close to the CHP, and Sözcü, a tabloid similar to the Sun in the UK.

Opposition officials say the oppressive media environment has limited the debate around the referendum and masked many problems in the country, including a worsening economic crisis, high youth unemployment, spiralling tensions with the PKK, terrorism and foreign policy woes. They say the stifling of discussion on these issues has been to Turkey’s detriment.

But from the government’s perspective, the rights worker argued, consolidating control over the media allows it to sway the 10% of undecided voters who could swing the result of the April referendum.

For many campaigning for press freedoms, the media crackdown is ironic because of their role in defeating the coup attempt last July.

Erdoğan was only able to appeal to Turkish citizens to go out on the streets through the iPhone of a reporter, who held up the president’s image on the FaceTime app to the camera and broadcast his appeal to millions of viewers who answered the call.

“Democracy means plurality,” said Yarkadaş. “The concept of plurality is being abolished with these actions against newspapers, and Turkey is being put in a position where there is only one voice.”