San Francisco Frontiers - Thousands protest crackdown on media in Turkey

Press freedom has been increasingly constrained in Turkey since a failed coup attempt in 2016, with sweeping prosecutions, digital censorship and accusations by the authorities that journalists are spreading fake news.

"Enough!" shouted marchers in the crowds, composed mainly of journalists, rights activists and opposition party representatives. "We can no longer breathe!"

On the Asian side of Istanbul, protesters held up photos of jailed journalists, chanting: "We will not be silenced. Enough is enough!" and "We will not bow to pressure".

Police put their number at at least 3,000.

In Ankara, at least 3,000 protesters gathered, according to a police count.

Recent weeks have seen what rights advocates say is mounting pressure on independent journalism.

The authorities have jailed 11 journalists in the past two months and shut down several media outlets, according to the Turkish Journalists' Union.

And earlier this month, police raided Turkey's most-watched news channel, Halk TV, halting broadcasts and installing a government-appointed administrator.

The move was the latest against media outlets seen as critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government.

It followed the closure of the website and social media accounts belonging to leading digital news outlet T24 over what authorities described as "LGBT propaganda".

- 'Intimidation' -

"This gathering is not simply about standing up for journalists," veteran journalist Zafer Arapkirli told AFP after the Istanbul protest.

"It is also about defending respect for society's right to access information and news through journalists and independent media," said the columnist for the BirGun daily.

For Arapkirli-- who himself faces lawsuits -- the more intense the pressure becomes, the stronger the response and the determination to stand against it must be.

"What the regime wants is to intimidate, silence and frighten society through such pressure -- by arresting individual journalists, seizing media outlets, banning news coverage and blocking access to social media," he said.

"We must show that we will not allow this to happen.

"We have done so up to now. I believe we are now moving towards demonstrating this determination on a much larger scale".

Gokhan Durmus, president of the Turkish Journalists Union, said there had been a change in the nature of "the government's attacks" aimed at the media.

"If we look at the recent restrictions, access bans and trustee appointments, they have targeted some of the most widely followed and watched broadcasters, news channels and media platforms," he told AFP.

"We are seeing a system emerge in which everything is uniform: one voice, one source of news, one centralised operation," he said.

-'Let us do our job'-

In Ankara, protesters shouted slogans against censorship and calling for freedom for jailed journalists.

"Today's protest was important both because it brought journalists together to make their voices heard and because it defended citizens' right to access information," Gokcer Tahincioglu of the shutdown T24 told AFP in Ankara.

"Journalists are determined to get one message across: we want to practise journalism, and we want to be able to do so freely," he said.

The government has repeatedly insisted that they do not arrest and imprison journalists for doing their job.

At the protest in Ankara, a letter from jailed BirGun journalist Ismail Ari was read to the crowd.

"I am being held in prison for no reason other than doing my job as a journalist. Days are being stolen from my life," Ari wrote from Sincan prison on the outskirts of Ankara.

"We will defend journalism to the very end. Take your hands off us, comply with the constitution and let us do our job."

Ari was arrested this month, the second time in seven months, on charges of "insulting a public official" and "publicly disseminating misleading information", following a complaint by Turkey's broadcasting watchdog chief, Ebubekir Sahin.

A.Smith--SFF