Turkey's journalists: 'We have 171 of our colleagues in jail'
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Turkey jails more journalists than any other country.
Of all the journalists imprisoned last year, a third were in Turkey.
This week alone, 17 are on trial in the country — charged with aiding and abetting terrorist organizations.
According to their peers, these charges are completely groundless. All 17 are affiliated with Turkey's oldest and fiercely independent newspaper, Cumhuriyet, which has openly criticized the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Since last summer's coup attempt, many of the paper's journalists have been imprisoned for months.
[Activists] are very concerned the judiciary is no longer independent.- Nil Koksal, CBC's foreign correspondent in Turkey
On Friday, a judge will determine whether these journalists will be released on bail.
If found guilty, they could be sentenced to up to 43 years in jail.
Yavuz Baydar, a Turkish journalist who managed to escape that fate by leaving the country last year, describes the steep change for Turkish members of the press after July 2016's failed coup.
"The engineering of mechanisms started from Erdoğan side, directly calling editors ... asking columnists who were critical to be fired. Basically acting as a defacto chief editor over the Turkish media," he tells The Current.
"From then on the machinery started rolling, and firings and sackings have become a pattern which have been, I think, the most severe punitive measure to be imposed in any country in the world in the past four years."
"Nine thousand of my colleagues, according to the Turkish journalist union, have found themselves sanctioned in that sense — corresponding to more than half of the journalist core in Turkey."
"Jailing of journalists started to hike geometrically," Baydar says.
"At the moment we have 171 of our colleagues in jail."
Fears of corruption and autocratic rule make the situation for the journalists on trial all the worse, explains Nil Koksal, CBC's foreign correspondent in Turkey.
"[Activists] are very concerned the judiciary is no longer independent," she tells guest host Laura Lynch.
"They feel these charges are politically motivated, and that the judges in this case, and similar cases, are doing what the government wants them to do."
And yet, it is the very people on trial who are best positioned to hold power to account, says Baydar.
"Journalism is a necessary tenant of any democracy, and this is missing in Turkey at the moment."
Listen to the conversation at the top of this post.
This segment was produced by The Current's Julian Uzielli, Ashley Mak and Ram Sharvendiran.