As Turkey Rises, 'A Real Problem' With Censorship

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Kurdish women hold pictures of jailed journalists in Istanbul on Sept. 10, during the start of the trial of 44 journalists with suspected links to rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party.

Kurdish women hold pictures of jailed journalists in Istanbul on Sept. 10, during the start of the trial of 44 journalists with suspected links to rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party.

Nearly two years ago, Soner Yalcin and more than a dozen of his employees at the online news outlet OdaTV joined the growing list of incarcerated Turkish journalists. Yalcin, the owner of OdaTV, is one of the sharpest critics of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government.

As their trial proceedings dragged on, challenges to the state's case grew, and most of the outlet's journalists were released, pending the trial's conclusion. But Yalcin and two others remain behind bars, 22 months and counting.

Turkey is disputing a new report that names it as the world's leading jailer of journalists, with scores behind bars ahead of Iran, China and other authoritarian states.

The Committee to Protect Journalists met with officials in Ankara this week about the problem and found them adamant that the journalists had broken criminal laws. The ongoing international attention to Turkey's treatment of the media has raised hopes that reforms could be forthcoming.

Defiance In Prison

Yalcin and his two employees are kept in isolation from the other prisoners, according to his partner, Istanbul interior designer Halidah Kurt. But she says Yalcin is finding plenty of time to read and to write.

"Actually, he's written a book in jail. It's about 600 pages, and he wrote it by hand because no computers or no typewriters are allowed in the prison," she says. "It's called Samizdat, and it tells about ... the latest cases which are taking place in Turkey."

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As Turkey Rises, 'A Real Problem' With Censorship