Does Hess Deportation Mean Turkeys Tough on Journalists?
ISTANBUL, Turkey (Aug. 16) — As U.S. freelance journalist Jake Hess waited today for the Turkish government to finish the paperwork necessary to deport him, his detention has prompted some to wonder whether press freedom has taken a turn for the worse in Turkey. Hess was detained Wednesday in the Kurdish majority city of Diyarbakir only weeks after writing articles highly critical of the Turkish government’s treatment of Kurds in the country’s southeast. The government cited his alleged links to illegal Kurdish organizations in its warrant for detention. Turkey fell to 122nd place in Reporters Without Borders’ annual ranking of press freedom last year — its lowest showing since the ranking began in 2002 — after comparative gains in mid-decade. “The reputation has been improving, but the fear is that this is back to the bad old days,” said Andrew Finkel, a British journalist and columnist at Today’s Zaman, an English-language newspaper based in Istanbul. “It is a reminder that Turkey
