Turkey courts violate journalists’ right to fair trial, report finds

Turkish courts regularly violate journalists’ right to a fair trial, according to the preliminary results of a trial monitoring project being carried out by the Turkey-based Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA) and the International Press Institute(IPI), a global network of editors, media executive and leading journalists for press freedom.

MLSA and IPI observed 90 court sessions of 71 separate trials in Turkey over a six-month period from July to December 2018 in 10 different provinces in Turkey. The vast majority of the defendants were journalists, but also included lawyers, academics and artists. Overall, 72 percent of the criminal charges were for alleged terrorism offences, while the rest mainly related to alleged acts of defamation.