MESOP FLASH : Turkey invites journalists into country to educate them about how Turkey imprisons journalists

10-5-2014 – MESOP  – Turkish officials throughout the week and into Friday scrambled to respond to last week’s “Freedom of the Press” report – published annually by the Washington-based Freedom House watchdog group – which had downgraded Turkey from “Partly Free” to “Not Free” and had explained that “constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press and expression are only partially upheld in practice, undermined by restrictive provisions in the criminal code and the Anti-Terrorism Act.”

The report also noted that “Turkey remained the world’s leading jailer of journalists in 2013, with 40 behind bars as of Dec. 1.” Responding to the ensuing controversy, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu declared on Friday that the report was “an insult” and that the real problem was that journalists remain uninformed about Turkey. Davutoglu had previously declared that Turkey was in fact more free than even “Partly Free” countries, part of a statement in which he emphasized that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) expected Turkish journalists “to reject” the Freedom House report. Ankara has had trouble settling on talking points describing its jailing of journalists in general, and more specifically on the number of journalists that the Turks are willing to admit are behind bars. Davutoglu’s Friday statements insisted that “there are only five imprisoned journalists with press cards,” opposite a list of 44. Responding to the same list, a statement released by Turkey’s Justice Ministry earlier this week had held that only 29 journalists were in jail. Government officials had in April cited a statement from the the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) – one that CPJ insists Ankara invented out of thin air – pegging the number at 15.