For the year 2022, the Coalition For Women In Journalism (CFWIJ) recorded 150 cases of violations against women journalists in Turkey along with an increasing number of legal barriers. The group stated that the state has “routinely weaponized its institutions to target women journalists.”
The Coalition For Women In Journalism (CFWIJ) group has noted that in 2022, as of November 1, it recorded 150 cases of violations against women journalists in Turkey. From January 1 to November 1, 2022, at least 50 women have faced legal persecution while 47 have been assaulted in the field by either the police force or supporters of the state. The group also argued that women journalists have also been targeted through organized troll campaigns online as well as through state media for criticizing government policies.
The infographic that CFWIJ shared demonstrates that the Turkish state has routinely “weaponized its judiciary as well as its law enforcement agencies to target the journalist community in the country”. The main forms of repression that stood out were legal harassment and physical assault.
Between January 1 and December 31, 2021, CFWIJ documented 239 cases of threats and violations against women journalists in Turkey. These took the form of:
- Legal harassment
- Physical assault
- Detention
- Workplace harassment
- Racist Attack
- Organized troll campaign
- Expulsion
- Accreditation revoked
- Threatened with violence
- State oppression
Legal harassment, physical assault and detention became the dominant features of the threats and violations. Between January 1 and December 31, 2021, the number of physical assaults increased by 583.33% compared to the last year. Furthermore as the report demonstrates in 2021, total number of incidents increased by 251.47% compared to the entire year of 2020. In 2019, this figure was 895.83% less.
