Turkey’s Presidential Communications Directorate is using its authority to issue or cancel press cards for journalists “to restrict the freedom to inform”, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Tuesday.
Pro-government journalists can easily obtain the cards, which are necessary to cover presidential or governmental events, while critical journalists have faced delays or rejection after attempting to renew them, RSF said.
Journalists can face legal consequences while covering street protests without a valid press card and may be punished under an April 27 police directive banning filming of police officers on duty.
“As it seems too much to expect a presidential office to manage press card allocation impartially we ask the government to reinstate an autonomous journalistic entity in order to put an end to biased practices that penalise critical journalists,” RSF Turkey representative Erol Önderoğlu said.
Turkey has rescinded some 2,000 press cards of journalists who are not favouring the government politically, “including Islamists critical of the government, republicans, secularists and those who support the Kurds”, RSF said.
The Communications Directorate has rejected 1,371 out of 10,486 applications for press cards and rescinded 1,238 of them in the three years it has had the authority to do so, according to RSF.
The directorate can refuse to issue a card for “undermining or acting against the honour of the profession” and “acting against national security or endangering public order”, RSF said. In November last year, the Council of State, one of the country’s highest courts, ruled that the vague wording in the regulations was “liable to create a climate of intimation for journalists”.
Journalists who are unemployed for longer than one month lose their cards and a “special committee” may annul the press cards of journalists who were awarded them on a permanent basis, according to the regulations.
As little as a quarter of all journalists working in Turkey may be holding valid press cards, according to Journalists Union of Turkey Chairman Gökhan Durmuş.
Turkey ranks 153rd out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index.
Ahval