‘Violations of rights against women journalists increase by 244 percent in Turkey’

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On the occasion of December 10 Human Rights Day on Friday, the Coalition for Women in Journalism (CFWIJ) released a report documenting the violations of rights faced by women journalists in the world.

"Gender minorities active in the press community regularly place themselves in harm's way in order to ensure that there is a voice holding power to account," said the CFWIJ in sharing the report, explaining that "in doing so, they do not only find themselves vulnerable to overreaches of the state and various political groups, but also to the weaponization of the misogyny prevalent in their respective societies."

810 cases of violations in a year

As of December 7, 2021, the CFWIJ had recorded 810 cases of violations against women journalists this year.

While 11 women journalist were killed this year, at least 169 women journalists were made to confront legal harassment, 130 faced physical assaults, 104 were arbitrarily detained. Hostilities against women journalists were also prevalent in the virtual realm with at least 89 of them being targeted with organized trolling and slander campaigns on social media.

In several cases, the personal details of women journalists were also made public online, exposing them to further attacks in the physical space. Meanwhile, in 2021, the CFWIJ documented at least 73 cases of women journalists being obstructed in the field, 64 expulsions from work and 50 cases of facing some form of threat or miscellaneous intimidation tactics.

Perpetrators of violence against women journalists were not always politically motivated. Nor were they limited to the state or the powerful.

According to the CFWIJ report, as many as 26 women journalists faced some form of workplace harassment in 2021. At least 27 women journalists were sexually harassed on the job, 17 were subjected to verbal harassment, three had their accredition revoked and three were abducted.

'Press freedom violations on the rise in Turkey'

The report has shared the following information about the violations of rights faced by women journalists in Turkey in a year:

Turkey has routinely flashed red on our risk map of women journalists. In 2021, the CFWIJ documented hundreds of violations against women journalists besides repeated infringements on the rights of the free press and free speech.

"According to our data, the state has repeatedly weaponized its institutions to intimidate and silence women journalists reporting on state violence and overreaches by those in power in the country. The most frequent tactics employed against women journalists this year were legal harassment, police brutality in the field and unjustified detentions.

"We recorded at least 94 cases of women journalists subjected to legal harassment for their reporting this year. Moreover, at least 82 women journalists were attacked in the field (the number includes physical assaults as well as other miscellaneous attempts to restrict press access in the field) and 18 women journalists were detained in the country.

"The number of violations in 2021 increased by a horrifying 244.11 percent compared to the cases we reported from Turkey last year.

"One glaring example of the violence underway against women journalists in Turkey is CFWIJ team member Ceren İskit, who was deliberately impeded by the police while monitoring women journalists' safety on the Women's March after the withdrawal from the İstanbul Convention.

"Ceren was physically and verbally harassed by the police while filming the incident at the very end of the demonstration. As the women were leaving the protest area, a man came and verbally abused a group of women. Ceren, a research coordinator for the CFWIJ, was filming the incident when the women tried to defend themselves. It was then that a group of policemen pushed Ceren, demanding that she stop filming and stay away." (EMK/SD)