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by LateRuin 3034 days ago
The majority of jailed journalist are there under anti terrorn laws regarding the PKK. While its not something I support, you have to compare today’s Turkey with yesterday’s Turkey and not with today’s Sweden.

It was a crime to even claim to be Kurdish in the past. Elected mayors were jailed simply for saying they were ethnic kurds. Wearing a headscarf was illegal in schools, courts, etc. Even an AKP president’s wife was stopped from wearing a headacarf in a public hospital while visiting a wounded soldier!

In a way, I guess its a sign of Turkey and AKP’s success that we are now being held to European standards. There are 100 journalists in jail currently. Previous adminsitrations would have simply sent the government deatb squad to their doors and ended the matter rather more swiftly rather than subject itself to such Western critism over public statistics.
1 comments
cygx 3034 days ago
In a way, I guess its a sign of Turkey and AKP’s success that we are now being held to European standards.

As far as numbers of imprisoned journalists are concerned, Chinese standards would be an improvement. 150 journalists[1] doesn't sound like that much, until you realize that's something like half the global number...

[1] http://europeanjournalists.org/turkey-journalists-in-jail/

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afyalman 3034 days ago
Hey, why don't you try to support any terrorist group in your country? I am not talking about some pseudo-terror groups, talking about real ones, like PKK. The amount of civilians they killed might constitute a whole country.
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cygx 3034 days ago
The scope isn't quite the same, but Germany went through a series of left-wing terrorist attacks in the 70s.

There's a (German) article[1] by Günther Nollau, former president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, that might be of interest. The title translates to something like Sympathy alone is no criminal offence.

I have only cursorily followed what has been happening in Turkey, but newspapers getting shut down, rulings by the constitutional court getting ignored and a president who unironically cited Nazi Germany as inspiration for a functioning presidential system raise quite a few alarm bells...

[1] http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-40831680.html

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afyalman 3034 days ago
This is not 1977 unfortunately. Try ISIS in Germany or in social media, if you are confident enough about the division between sympathizer and supporter.

http://www.dw.com/en/europol-probes-islamic-state-created-so...

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