How fast the tide turns in Turkey.
Just over a week ago, journalists and free speech advocates here celebrated the release from jail of Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, the editor-in-chief and Ankara bureau chief, respectively, of the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet.
Turkey’s Constitutional Court had ruled that their arrest had violated their rights as journalists. Many believed the decision would start to roll back a government crackdown on critical media that had expanded significantly in recent months. “I think this is a very historic decision,” Dundar said upon his release, adding that he was happy “there were still judges in Turkey”.
Some judges giveth; some taketh away. On March 4, a Turkish court approved a government takeover of Feza Media Group that oversees Zaman, Turkey’s most widely circulated newspaper, Cihan, a leading news agency, and Today’s Zaman, an English-language daily with international reach.
The takeover marks this government’s biggest blow against media freedom, and yet another gut-punch in the long-running and deeply personal slugfest between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Fethullah Gulen.
An aging Islamic leader from Turkey living in self-imposed exile in rural Pennsylvania, Gulen oversees a vast, loosely affiliated organisation that runs thousands of schools, businesses, and media outlets around the world and had in recent decades placed many of its members in key positions in Turkey’s police and judiciary.