Zaman also for the first time wrote openly about the “rape and murder” threats female journalists Melis Alphan, Sirin Payzin, Selin Girit, Tugce Tatari, Banu Guven, Nuray Mert and Ece Temelkuran received during the 2013 Gezi Park protests. Professor Yasemin Inceoglu at the Galatasaray University communication department told Al-Monitor, “All these journalists are professionals. The attacks against them are nothing but an open threat to silence those few critical minds in the media. I certainly don’t understand the silence of some other female journalists — playing the three monkeys, when their colleagues are subject of such a lynching campaign.”
Although there are campaigns in support of these female journalists, it is something else to stand up against a strong government and a crowd backed and encouraged by this government. “We did not file a lawsuit against those threats because of the sensitive environment back then,” Karan told Al-Monitor. “And I have no knowledge that our security enforcement did anything against it, even when these threats were made public.”
The government’s pressure cost both Zaman and Karan their jobs at the Haberturk daily newspaper, with Zaman now writing for Taraf and Karan for Cumhuriyet. Karan said, “I did not lose the job after one incident, but Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu literally lashed out at me in three separate live TV interviews. I remember well the one in December 2011 when I asked him — based on the information I was receiving from my sources inside Syria — about the Salafist groups that were spreading fear and [their activities] being no less of a threat than those of [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad. He said then that they know Syria street by street, quarter by quarter, while denying the Salafist threat and entirely blaming Assad. Today, we know the result.”
Karan told Al-Monitor that Davutoglu’s appointment as prime minister means nothing but the continuation of pressure on the media. “As long as journalists talk about what the government does in a positive light, there is no problem. Their policies are not supposed to be questioned. Therefore, media freedom is going to shrink even further, if this situation continues.”
via Why are pro-AKP Twitter users targeting female journalists? – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.
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