A Turkish court has blocked access to Bianet’s Media Monitoring Report, which documents rights violations related to press freedom, the Free Web Turkey platform reported on Monday.
The Gaziosmanpaşa 1st Criminal Court of Peace blocked access to the report on August 7, following a request from Nihat Özçelik, a stockbroker who has been the subject of numerous criminal complaints, including allegations of stock market manipulation, bribery and extortion.
Özçelik’s name was featured in the report’s section titled “Prohibitions, Closures, Seizures,” which discussed his repeated efforts to secure access bans to news articles that mentioned his involvement in various scandals.
Özçelik claimed that the report, along with other news articles, harmed his reputation. The court accepted Özçelik’s argument, concluding that the content violated his personal rights.
According to Free Web Turkey, a platform monitoring rights violations, this latest ruling marks the fifth such order Özçelik has obtained, bringing the total number of blocked items related to him, including news reports and social media posts, to 587.
Additionally, an article in the Cumhuriyet newspaper, which highlighted the surge in censorship against media outlets in early 2023, was also blocked.
The article, published on March 10, 2023 and titled “Basına ‘sansür’ tam gaz: Son 3 ayda en çok erişim engeli Cumhuriyet ve BirGün’e,” (Full Steam Ahead on Press Censorship: Most Access Bans in the Last 3 Months Target Cumhuriyet and BirGün) reported that news stories covering a wide range of topics, including corruption, drug trafficking, violence against women and religious sects, had been subject to access bans.
The article specifically mentioned Özçelik under the headline “News about a Stockbroker Accused of Manipulation.”
Turkey was ranked 158th out of 180 countries in the 2024 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
In 2023 Turkey also banned access to 219,059 URLs, according to the Free Web Turkey 2023 Internet Censorship Report.
