Turkey: What Happens When You Have No Freedom of Speech
by Uzay Bulut • April 8, 2022 at 5:00 am
"In Turkey, human rights lawyers are particularly targeted for their work representing human rights defenders, victims of human rights violations, victims of police violence and torture, and many people who simply express dissenting opinions." — Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, June 9, 2021.
The government announced in 2020 that it had opened legal proceedings against 597,783 individuals, detained 282,790 and arrested 94,975 for allegedly being behind the 2016 coup attempt. Meanwhile, torture and abuse targeting the government's perceived opponents have become widespread in prisons across Turkey.
"The Commissioner is alarmed by the fact that the Turkish judiciary displays, especially in terrorism-related cases, unprecedented levels of disregard for even the most basic principles of law, such as presumption of innocence, no punishment without crime and non-retroactivity of offences, or not being judged for the same facts again." — The Council of Europe, Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights, February 19, 2020.
Erdogan, meanwhile, claims there are no journalists behind bars...
It appears that, according to the Turkish government, dissent is "terrorism." Anyone who does not support the government might be put in the category of so-called "traitors" or "terrorists" and punished by the government.
The citizens of Turkey who are perceived to be "enemies" or simply opponents of the government are targeted, abused, jailed or even killed. If they are suspended from their jobs, they are blacklisted by the government, so that it is almost impossible for them to find another job. They are thus put in a situation where they face hunger and poverty daily. Their lives and livelihoods are systematically destroyed. Is there any Western country that treats Muslims so cruelly and unlawfully?
"Racism, Islamophobia, xenophobia and discrimination remain the main problem for the Turkish community in Europe," Erdogan said at a press conference in Germany in 2021.
The statement was doubly ironic, as Erdogan's regime has arrested and abducted countless Muslims. He has apprehended them from across the world for allegedly being, or supporting, "terrorists" behind a 2016 coup attempt.
Nowhere else, however, can one find the countless crimes committed by the government of Turkey against its own Muslim citizens. The human rights of many citizens of Turkey who were born Muslim -- whether they became devout, secular, or ex-Muslim -- are continually and systematically being violated by the Turkish government.
