Several free speech organizations recently submitted a formal statement to the U.N. Human Rights Council, calling for action to be taken to fix the “major deterioration” of free expression in Turkey. Earlier this month groups like the Committee to Protect…
Two Turkish journalists were sentenced to two years in prison last week for republishing the post-attack Charlie Hebdo cover that depicted the Prophet Mohammed. Hikmet Cetinkaya and Ceyda Karan, both columnists for the Turkish opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet, are appealing their…
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attempts to censor journalists and cartoonists doesn’t extend just to Turkish citizens: When she tried to leave Turkey this past Sunday, Dutch journalist Ebru Umar was arrested and brought before a judge for tweets she posted about President…
Turkish comedian, actor, and cartoonist Cem Yilmaz went to trial on Monday for a recent tweet “insulting” Governor Selim Cebiroglu. Facing up to two years in jail for expressing his upset over the governor’s verbal abuse of math teacher Halil…
The Turkish government on Friday seized control of the opposition-aligned Feza Media Group, which includes the newspaper Zaman, its English-language sister publication Today’s Zaman, and the Cihan news agency. Employees locked themselves inside the Feza building on Friday as supporters…
“Follow me at your own risk.” This is the disclaimer Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff now displays as part of his Twitter bio in response to the recent ban of his website by the Turkish government. The artist recently sat down…
Brazilian political cartoonist Carlos Latuff may have become popular amongst the general population of Turkey, but the Turkish government will stop at nothing to still his pen. In a recent interview with Al-Monitor, the cartoonist discusses the implications of his…
In Turkey’s increasingly repressive media environment, where journalists may be arrested for criticizing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan or officially forbidden from covering certain stories such as this week’s suicide attack in Istanbul, satirical magazines are nevertheless forging ahead. And while…
Award-winning political cartoonist Kevin Kallaugher has shared his thoughts about United States’ society and politics in The Economist since 1978, but recently, he shared his concerns about the state of free speech in Turkey and the difficulty his fellow cartoonists…
A Turkish newspaper columnist wrote last week that the state-run television broadcaster cancelled the popular children’s cartoon Pepee in 2013 because the main character proclaimed to his young audience that “theft, slander and lying are bad.” Some within then-Prime Minister…