After Failed Coup, Journalism in Turkey Often Means Jail

In 2014, Turkish journalist Arzu Yildiz broke news on how the country's intelligence agency was funnelling arms to rebels in Syria, a sensitive subject for authorities under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The next night, police came knocking at Yildiz's home, but she was not there. Yildiz spent the following five months in hiding in a windowless room before fleeing to Canada. She left her two daughters behind.

"This affected three generations," Yildiz said. "My mother lost her daughter and I lost my daughters."

"I will never go back to Turkey again. My heart is broken."

Yet Yildiz may count herself among the lucky ones.

Two years after Yildiz's brush with the law, Erdogan crushed a coup, and in the three years since, Turkey has become the biggest jailer of journalists in the world, according to figures collated by the International Press Institute, IPI, and the Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ.

An anti-government protest in Istanbul in October 2017 over the mass arrests of journalists. Demonstrators hold placards reading 'free media, free country' and 'journalism is not a crime'. Photo: EPA/TOLGA BOZOGLU

An estimated 137 are currently behind bars, a tally that shot up as authorities pursued a devastating crackdown in the wake of the abortive putsch in July 2016, blamed by Erdogan on a US-based cleric but exploited by his government to target dissenters across Turkish society.

By the government's own count, more than 130 media outlets have been shut down.

"As long as even one journalist remains in jail or is afraid of reporting the truth or gets fired because they reported the truth, then there is a big problem for any democracy," said Emre Kizilkaya, a journalist and vice president of the National...