Turkey closes more Kurdish media outlets, purges 10,000 civil servants

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – In a latest wave of crackdown on media, Turkish authorities on Saturday ordered the closure of 10 newspapers, two news agencies, and three magazines—a majority of them Kurdish—with a government decree.

Among the media shut down are Turkey’s sole Kurdish daily newspaper Azadiya Welat, Dicle news agency (DIHA), the multilingual, all women news agency JINHA, the literary and cultural Tiroj magazine, as well as several local websites in the provinces of Batman, Mardin, Sirnak, and Hakkari.

The decree released on the Government’s Official Gazette website accused the above mentioned media and at least one Turkish leftist daily of “disseminating propaganda for a terrorist organization.”

The number of media outlets shut down by the government since the start of a state of emergency in the aftermath of the failed July 15 military coup attempt rose to 160, according to a Reuters estimate.

In September, Turkey closed down the country’s sole Kurdish kids’ channel Zarok TV which was only airing cartoons and children songs alongside several other Kurdish TVs.

Turkey’s state of emergency has empowered the police, judiciary, and the government granting it with executive powers that can circumvent the Parliament.

Reporters Without Borders, an international press freedom advocacy group which lists Turkey 151 in its 2016 World Press Freedom Index, called the Turkish media crackdown an “abuse of power.”

Moreover, the group blamed the suppression of freedom on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “growing authoritarianism.”

THE PURGE

Meanwhile, a post-coup purge of civil servants continued on Saturday as the Turkish cabinet sacked over 10,000 teachers, medics, judges, prosecutors, university lecturers, Imams, parliamentary advisors, police officers, and soldiers.

Turkish authorities accused the sacked government employees of “association or membership with terror groups or organizations deemed dangerous that threaten the national security of the state.”

This included the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Gulen Movement led by the US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen who Erdogan holds responsible for masterminding the coup attempt.

The sacked civil servants, whose number now exceeds a staggering 100,000, also had their passports revoked by the government which forbade them from traveling abroad.

Additionally, the Turkish authorities ordered the families of the dismissed to move out of public housing in 15 days.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany