NEWS

“For the lifting of Turkey’s two-year state of emergency to have been anything more than a cosmetic exercise, it needed to be accompanied by urgent measures. These have not been taken. Instead Turkey’s brutal crackdown against journalists, activists, lawyers, academics and other civil society actors has continued unabated. NGOs and newspapers have been shut down and even simple celebrations such as Pride Parades have been banned or restricted. As the students of the Middle East Technical University in Ankara discovered in May, those trying to defy these bans are met with police batons and tear gas.” Stefan Simanowitz – Media Manager, Amnesty International