Revealed: the terror and torment of Turkey's jailed journalists
Prisoners tell of solitary confinement and maltreatment after being caught up in ‘Kafkaesque’ media purge
Writer Ahmet Altan who was detained after the failed coup last year and his brother Mehmet Altan, a journalist awaiting trial for attempting to bring down the government. Composite: Web
Scores of imprisoned Turkish journalists face a Kafkaesque nightmare of legal limbo, farcical charge sheets, maltreatment and even solitary confinement in the country that locks up more reporters than any other in the world.
A series of Guardian interviews and written exchanges with several of those jailed as a result of a sweeping media crackdown found a huge mental burden on the incarcerated, as well as tough social and intellectual restrictions.
“I have been broken and twisted in more ways than I can imagine,” says the recently released novelist Aslı Erdoğan (no relation to the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan), who spent five days in solitary confinement at the start of four months of pretrial detention.
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The CHP says 152 journalists are behind bars and 173 media outlets have been shut since the coup attempt, including newspapers, magazines, radio stations, websites and news agencies. More than 2,500 journalists have been laid off because of the closures and 800 have had their press cards revoked, with many also having their passports confiscated.