By Gareth Jenkins (vol. 5, no. 3 of the Turkey Analyst)

Most international attention has focused on the more than 100 journalists who are now in jail in Turkey as a result of what they have written or said. But more pernicious – and ultimately much more corrosive to freedom of expression – is the widespread self-censorship and the climate of fear, which extends well beyond the media into Turkish society at large. Yet it would be a mistake to hold the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan solely to blame. The underlying problem goes much deeper and is considerably older than the AKP government. Indeed, it could be argued that the main responsibility for the deteriorating state of freedom of expression in the country lies with the Turkish media itself.

By Tülin Daloğlu (vol. 2, no. 4 of the Turkey Analyst) 

On February 16, Turkey's largest media company, the Dogan Media Group, was fined nearly $500 million for an alleged late tax payment. Tax laws are complicated, and the exact circumstances of the matter are unclear. The troubling point is that this follows on five months of public bullying of the Dogan group by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Since September, he has repeatedly asked his followers to boycott DMG's newspapers. The tax investigation into the Dogan group, moreover, began only a few weeks after the opening of a court case to close the governing AKP. Erdogan argues that the tax case is a matter not of press freedom but of tax evasion, yet the fine can hardly be defended as  "business as usual."