Turkish journalist at daily Bugün is threatened

Date posted: February 20, 2014

ANKARA

A journalist at the Ankara branch of the daily Bugün has claimed that he received a threatening phone call which he describes as “insulting and discomforting.” The threat follows recent similar claims by Cüneyt Özdemir, a writer at the newspaper Radikal and anchor of the 5N 1K program broadcast by the CNN Türk TV station.

Adem Yavuz Arslan said in an interview with Today’s Zaman that he was threatened by a columnist at a Turkish newspaper, and that the columnist claimed to have read a report prepared by the Prime Ministry Inspection Board (PMIB). Arslan’s name was in the report, the columnist said, because Arslan is accused of cooperating with an anti-government gang in the police department.

“If there is an operation, you will be arrested,” Arslan quoted the columnist as saying. “Some people from the pro-government media are calling journalists from other news outlets and are threatening them; one of those journalists is me,” Arslan continued. He also claimed that the columnist advised him to choose carefully whether he is pro-government or working for the opposition, because he might “have a bad experience.”

Arslan described the incident as “insulting and discomforting,” and said that “there is a slander campaign going against writers and correspondents, whereby a police operation is mentioned, and a warning that they risk being arrested. And it is all being organized by government officials,” Arslan alleged. “Just because it’s possible to assert the existence of a gang, it does not follow that 40 innocent people are in the gang.”

Ever since a bribery and corruption scandal erupted on Dec. 17 last year, which resulted in the detention of the sons of some government ministers and certain businessmen close to the government, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has described the corruption investigation as a “dirty operation” aimed at toppling his government. He says a gang nested within the state — referring to members of the Hizmet movement — in collaboration with foreign powers, is behind the operation.

Source: Todays Zaman , February 20, 2014

Tags: Freedoms | Hizmet (Gulen) movement | Turkey |