Cem Küçük distorted it openly...

Turkey is one of the two countries in Europe where the most severe violations of media freedom occur. The other is Ukraine, which is under wartime conditions. 

    This finding is included in the "Media Freedom Violations Monitoring Report" prepared by the MFRR (Media Freedom Rapid Response). In the report for the first six months of 2023, it is stated: "Arbitrary arrests, criminal charges, and convictions were consistently used to intimidate journalists and silence critical and independent journalism." Turkey continued to be one of the countries that imprisons the most journalists in the world. At the time this report was published, 21 journalists were still in prison."

     Turkey is also among the leading countries in terms of access bans and requests to block content from social media platforms. This information comes from Free Web Turkey's 2022 Internet Censorship report. The report also emphasizes that most of the more than 40,536 URLs blocked in 2022 were news reports about President Erdoğan, his family, the government, and AKP members.

    We started last week with these reports, and new developments confirming them followed one after another. Microsoft blocked access to the entire T24 news site, which receives server services from them, due to an old news report containing the "response of Beşiktaş manager Burak Yılmaz to allegations of violence against his wife." Due to this censorship by Microsoft, which was not based on a judicial decision, T24 could not be accessed for more than 4 hours. 

     Moreover, Microsoft Turkey General Manager Levent Özbilgin displayed an ugly attitude toward the T24 management who called him, asking, 'Who do you think you are?' It was thought-provoking that not only did no institution object to this obstruction by Microsoft, but professional organizations also remained indifferent. 

      Subsequently, detentions and investigations followed one another. T24 writer Tolga Şardan and Halktv.com.tr Editorial Director Dinçer Gökçe were detained, followed the next day by Kısa Dalga writer Cengiz Erdinç. While Gökçe and Erdinç were released under judicial control, Tolga Şardan was arrested. On top of that, investigations were launched against Bianet writer Evrim Kepenek, as well as BirGün Editorial Coordinator Uğur Koç, News Manager Uğur Şahin, and reporter İsmail Arı. 

    All of these investigations are being conducted under the charge of 'publicly spreading misleading information,' a crime invented with the amendment made to the press law last year. Any news that the AKP government does not like can be used as a pretext for this accusation. Pro-government media also ignores the detention and arrest of journalists. So much so that while Akşam newspaper published the statement of Palestinian journalists in Istanbul, it saw no news value in the protest action held by professional organizations in Ankara for Tolga Şardan! In fact, Milliyet, the newspaper to which Tolga Şardan dedicated years and added value with his journalism, did not report a single line about his arrest; it is a pity.

     The worst came from Türkiye newspaper writer Cem Küçük. He not only declared Tolga Şardan a 'liar' but also wrote, 'In his statement to the police, he said, "Up to this minute, no denial or statement has been made by the Presidency and the MİT Presidency, who are seen as parties in the article," but MİT denied it. So, Şardan put his foot in it here too.' 

    However, I checked once more while preparing this article; MİT had no statement regarding Tolga Şardan's article titled 'What is in the "Judiciary report" that MİT presented to the Presidency?', which was used as the basis for his arrest. The Communications Directorate's Disinformation Center also made a single, absurd sentence of a statement after Şardan's arrest, and that was all.

     It was Cem Küçük who actually put his foot in it. I do not expect him to show professional solidarity with an arrested journalist, but this is too much. He sits in his ivory tower and spins lies.

     Other pro-government journalists are also playing the three monkeys. They do not see.