Turkey has been ranked 153rd among 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index of the Reporters without Borders (RSF).

While only a few countries like Uzbekistan, Belarus, Sudan, Tajikistan, Libya, Yemen, China and North Korea have been ranked worse, countries like Bangladesh, Russia, Venezuela, Pakistan and Myanmar have been ranked better.

On the top ranks of the index are four Scandinavian countries, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark with the Central American country Costa Rica following them.

While Germany has been ranked 13th, United Kingdom has been ranked 33rd, France 34th, Italy 41st, United States 44th, Japan 67th.

It’s been brought to focus with utmost concern in the recent RSF report that Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks who’s currently imprisoned in the UK, could be sentenced to 175 years in prison in the US in case he’s extradited.

The 2021 RSF report on Turkey observed:

“The risk of imprisonment and the fear of being subjected to judicial control or stripped of one’s passport is ever-present.”

“The Presidential Directorate for Communications, which issues press cards, use clearly discriminatory practices in order to marginalise and criminalise the regime’s media critics.”

“All means possible are used to eliminate pluralism in this ‘New Turkey’ marked by Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s hyper-presidency; one in which arbitrary decisions by magistrates and government agencies are the new normal.”

“Internet censorship has reached unprecedented levels. Questioning the authorities and the privileged is now almost impossible.”

The report also makes a particular emphasis on the situation regarding popular social media platforms like Twitter, which have been forced to partake in the Turkish state’s censorship through certain means:

“If international social media platforms fail to appoint a legal representative in Turkey and apply the censorship decisions taken by Turkey’s courts, they are exposed to an escalating range of sanctions that include fines, withdrawal of advertising and reduction in the bandwidth available to them.”

The report concludes:

“Turkey’s military operations along the border with Syria and in the Idlib region, its military intervention in Libya, its political manipulation of the Syrian refugee crisis and its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic have all been used to reinforce its authoritarian policies towards critical media and its use of the judicial system for political ends.”

RSF is a non-govermental organisation based in Paris, France, with representation in many countries around the world, defending freedom of information on a global scale since 1980s.