Press freedom day, a bad joke

At the recommendation of its Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the U.N. General Assembly in 1993 proclaimed May 3 as World Press Freedom Day, which is often referred to as World Press Day or Press Freedom Day. One fundamental aim of the celebration of the day since then has been to evaluate press freedom around the world, as well as defend the media from attacks on their independence and pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.

For the past few years, Turkish journalist organizations have been making statements underlining the very serious threats Turkish media has been facing and lamenting that in such a country marking press freedom day would just be a bad joke. In Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) World Press Freedom Index Turkey ranked 151st out of 180 countries in 2016. The situation was not much better in 2015 when Turkey ranked 149th.

Yet, the two-step retreat of Turkey on the RSF World Press Freedom Index demonstrated what Turkish journalists have been complaining about for the past many years: Systematic deterioration of the climate of freedoms as autocracy has been gradually institutionalizing itself in the country.

The "Freedom in the World 2016" and "Freedom of the Press 2016" reports by Freedom House were indeed like a summary of the situation in Turkey. As regards to the press freedom status in Turkey, like the previous year, Freedom House said Turkey was "not free," while in regards to "freedom status" Turkey was among the "partly free" countries. The aggregate score of the climate of freedoms in Turkey was reported to be "53" with a freedom rating of just 3.5 on the scale of seven. On the same scale political rights was a lower "3" while civil...