{"id":27795,"date":"2016-08-17T03:37:39","date_gmt":"2016-08-17T03:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/turkey-pro-kurdish-newspaper-ozgur-gundem-shut\/"},"modified":"2016-08-17T03:37:26","modified_gmt":"2016-08-17T03:37:26","slug":"turkey-pro-kurdish-newspaper-ozgur-gundem-shut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/turkey-pro-kurdish-newspaper-ozgur-gundem-shut\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey: Pro-Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Gundem shut down"},"content":{"rendered":"

{A court temporarily closes down Ozgur Gundem accusing it of “continuously conducting propaganda” for Kurdish fighters.}<\/p>\n

A court in Turkey has ordered the interim closure of a newspaper for allegedly having links with Kurdish fighters waging a war against the state and spreading “terrorist propaganda” on behalf of them.<\/p>\n

The judgment on Tuesday by the Istanbul court accused the Ozgur Gundem paper of “continuously conducting propaganda for Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)” and “acting as if it is a publication of the armed terror organisation”.<\/p>\n

The PKK, designated a “terrorist” group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States, took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.<\/p>\n

At least seven people, including three civilians, were killed on Monday in an attack on a police station blamed on PKK in the southeast of the country, which has seen some of the most intense fighting in decades after a ceasefire between the Turkish state and the PKK collapsed in July 2015.<\/p>\n

{{‘Press freedom violation’}}<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Turkish media showed photos and footage of police raiding Ozgur Gundem’s offices in Istanbul and arresting several journalists, reportedly including the newspaper’s management.<\/p>\n

The pro-Kurdish Democratic Peoples’ Party (HDP), an opposition party in the parliament, called the decision to close the newspaper a violation of press freedom.<\/p>\n

“This court order has been issued in order to breach people’s freedom to information and their global human rights,”
\nSaruhan Oruc, the HDP’s deputy leader said.<\/p>\n

Ozgur Gundem has previously been subjected to raids and legal action. Its offices have also come under attack, with dozens of its employees arrested and killed since the 1990s.<\/p>\n

Between 1994 and 2011, the paper remained closed due to a court order.<\/p>\n

‘Decision can be appealed’<\/p>\n

Turkey has been in a state of emergency since a faction of soldiers in the Turkish army tried to take down the government on July 15.<\/p>\n

Since then, there has been a massive overhaul in the Turkish bureaucracy – from police to judges to academics – as the government seeks to remove state employees who support Fethullah Gulen, a US-based Muslim religious leader, who it claims is behind the coup attempt.<\/p>\n

Scores of media organisations have also been closed in line with the government decrees under the emergency rule.<\/p>\n

A senior Turkish official told Al Jazeera, however, that the closure of Ozgur Gundem had nothing to do with the country’s current state of emergency.<\/p>\n

“This is a court order as opposed to a decree and therefore is not related to the state of emergency,” the official said.<\/p>\n

“The defendants can appeal this decision.”<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Turkey issued two new decrees, dismissing thousands of police officers, army members and bureaucrats, Turkish media said.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{A court temporarily closes down Ozgur Gundem accusing it of “continuously conducting propaganda” for Kurdish fighters.} A court in Turkey has ordered the interim closure of a newspaper for allegedly having links with Kurdish fighters waging a war against the state and spreading “terrorist propaganda” on behalf of them. The judgment on Tuesday by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-27795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27795"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=27795"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=27795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}