Kerim Balcı and lawyer Fikret Duran were the guests of the International Journalist Association under the moderation of IJA Foreign Relations Director Yüksel Durgut at Düsseldorf.
In the session, which was broadcast live from IJA’s YouTube channel, the pressure regime applied by the AKP government to silence opposition media institutions was discussed.
In his speech, lawyer Fikret Duran explained how the Samanyolu Broadcasting Group, one of the largest media groups in Turkey, was silenced.
Lawyer Duran emphasized that the closure and confiscation process accelerated after Samanyolu TV reported on corruption. The channel was fined 63 times in just 1 day just before the elections and more than 70 broadcasting stoppages were imposed. There is no other example of this in the history of the republic of Turkey, and all the punishments are related to the news. The purpose of these penalties was to make the television channel unable to broadcast by putting it under heavy economic burden.
There have also been economic attacks on former media employees. A measure was placed on the assets of these people in Turkey.
Journalist Kerim Balcı emphasized the importance of the international report revealing the situation of journalists whose property was confiscated. Balcı; ‘This report prepared helps journalists who have financial problems abroad.’ Kerim BalcI; “The accounts of some exiled journalists, especially in the United States and Germany, have been frozen, but with this report, journalists have been removed from the blacklist,” said he.