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On 27 October 2016, the European Parliament adopted a Resolution on the “Situation of journalists in Turkey”. The resolution was adopted following an attempted coup d’état in Turkey in July 2016, when more than 250 people were killed, and 2 100 injured. The European Parliament “strongly condemns” the attempted coup, and “deplores the high number of casualties”.It also expressed its “solidarity with the victims and their families”. The Resolution also acknowledges that the Turkish Government has the “right and responsibility” to respond to the coup attempt, and that Turkey faces a “real threat from...

The case of Kaos GL v. Turkey is an example of a case whose findings breach Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) on the right to freedom of expression of a particular kind. The case concerns the seizure of all the copies of a magazine published by Kaos GL, a cultural research and solidarity association for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people (“LGBT”). The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) found that the aim of protecting public morals relied upon by the Turkish authorities had been insufficient to justify the prior-censorship of the LGBT-magazine for more...

On 28 April 2016, an Istanbul court sentenced two journalists of the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet, which is regarded as critical of the government, to two years’ imprisonment for publishing a cartoon of Mohammed and thereby inciting public hatred and insulting religious values. On the front page of its first issue after the attacks on its editors in Paris on 7 January 2015, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo showed a cartoon of a crying Prophet Mohammed holding up a sign stating “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”). Following the attacks, the phrase “Je suis Charlie” became a sign of solidarity...

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has once more confirmed the strong protection that is to be given to journalists’ sources, in a case also related to the disclosure of confidential information and the protection of whistle-blowers. The Court is of the opinion that the Turkish authorities have violated the right to freedom of expression of journalists, reporting on important matters related to the armed forces. The magazine Nokta published an article based on documents classified “confidential” by the Chief of Staff of the armed forces in Turkey. It revealed a system for classifying publishing...

On 1 December 2015, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered a judgment dealing with a blocking order in Turkey of the popular video-sharing website YouTube. The Court found that the blocking of access to YouTube amounted to a violation of the right to receive and impart information under Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). The Court observed that YouTube, as an Internet platform, enabled information on political and social matters to be broadcast and citizen journalism to emerge. The Court found that there was no provision in the Turkish law allowing domestic...