UPDATE : Mathias Depardon has been released and deported from Turkey on 9 June 2017 after 32 days of captivity. The gathering in Brussels on Monday 12 at 5 pm (Place Luxembourg) is maintained for asking the release of all journalists in jail.   — A joint call for French freelance photographer Mathias Depardon’s release by the Turkish authorities had been made by the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), two other press freedom groups and 19 news organizations for which he has worked. Depardon, 37, has been detained arbitrarily for the past eleven days in Turkey. EFJ and the 21 organizations…

On 1 June 2017 in Brussels, after 24 hours of detention and 3,818 kilometres from Gaziantep, the family and friends of Mathias Depardon, the French journalist imprisoned in Turkey, came together to form a Belgian support committee. Mathias Depardon lived in Brussels for around ten years and completed his journalistic and photography studies there. The Belgian committee welcomed the interview that took place on 25 May between the French President Emmanuel Macron and the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which is regarded as a first step in the right direction. Further to this meeting, an initial consular visit took place…

On 16 May 2017, the EFJ-IFJ and partner organisations submitted the following alert to the Council of Europe’s platform for the safety and protection of journalists : On 12 May 2017, Oğuz Güven, editor-in-chief of the online edition of the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, was detained as part of a criminal investigation led by the Bureau of Press Offences of the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office in Istanbul. On 15 May, Güven appeared before a judge, who ordered that he be held in pre-trial detention, on “propaganda for a terrorist organisation” and “defamation against a person’s memory” charges. Both charges against the…

Eutelsat SA, the French satellite provider hosting over 6000 televisions channels, has notified on 14 April 2017 its intention “to remove” the signals of Channel News, Ronahi TV and Sterk TV, three Kurdish language television channel broadcasting from EU countries to Kurdish speaking audience in Turkey and Syria, from its transponder because “the content in which statements are made by the leaders of the terrorist organisation called as PKK/KCK”. According to EFJ sources, Eutelsat SA is acting under the pressure of RTÜK (Turkish Radio Television Supreme Council) to remove the EU-based Kurdish channels. In an urgent notice sent to the…

The European and International Federations of Journalists (EFJ-IFJ) are strongly concerned about the judicial harassment in Turkey against journalists and media workers detained for allegedly “being member” or “doing propaganda on behalf of an illegal organisation”. The EFJ-IFJ has received a detailed report about the critical situation of the young (27) female Turkish journalist and law student Aysenur Parildak, arrested for more than 9 months, released by court on 2nd of May 2017 and immediately re-arrested the same day with new charges related to the same facts (being correspondent for Zaman newspaper). Similarly mid-April 2017, 12 journalists (Gökçe Fırat Çulhaoğlu, Yakup Çetin, Bünyamin Köseli, Cihan…

The European and International Federation of Journalists (EFJ-IFJ) organised on 2nd of May 2017 a workshop for TGS trade unionists (Journalists Union of Turkey) in Istanbul with Tim Dawson (NUJ President) as the trainer. In the training, the NUJ example in the UK was discussed and TGS branch and national leaders debated various issues including collective bargaining, signing recognition agreements, recruiting members accross all sectors, the impact of social media, producing stress surveys, distributing flyers, proposing legal services and planning activities in the country. Have a look to the video report (activate subtitles in English by pressing on CC) about…