Aqil: Turkey must immediately stop targeting journalists and human rights defenders

Foundation condemned Maat for Peace, Development and Human Rights (Egypt)The re-arrest of novelist Ahmed Altan and journalist Nazli Alejak, a week after the Turkish court decided to release them while placing them under judicial control, which contravenes international conventions and agreements signed by Turkey.

The Turkish authorities had arrested the two in July 2016 on charges of participating in the failed Turkish coup in the same year, which the Turkish authorities used as a pretext to suppress freedom of opinion and expression in Turkey and control public opinion, and they were sentenced to life imprisonment in 2018 until the Court of Appeal canceled the ruling last July. .

The Foundation affirms that such acts constitute an assault on freedom of opinion and expression and violate the rules of general international law and represent an explicit violation of Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Articles 2, 3, and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Damages the credibility of the Turkish judiciary and reveals the extent of political interference in the judiciary's decisions.

For his part, Ayman Aqil, head of the Maat Foundation, expressed his growing concern about the deterioration of media freedom in Turkey, explaining that the Turkish authorities have arrested 319 journalists and issued arrest warrants for 142 journalists in exile after the failed military coup in 2016, calling on the international community to stand up to its responsibility towards protecting freedom of opinion. And expression within Turkey, which has reached low levels, and Akil added that Turkey is the first in the world to imprison journalists and opinion activists, and there are about 170 journalists and media workers in pretrial detention or in prison on terrorist charges, in addition to its ranking 157th among 180 countries in the Reporters Without Organization index. Limits to freedom of the press.