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Crackdown Before NATO Summit
Turkey widened a crackdown on public life ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara, arresting more than 200 people during raids across Ankara last month and jailing a comedian while blocking a cruise ship carrying LGBTQ+ passengers from docking.
“arresting more than 200 people during raids across Ankara last month”
Human Rights Watch said the crackdown was evidence of Turkey’s “ruthless intolerance of freedom of speech and assembly,” and the watchdog added that the summit was taking place amid “far-reaching restrictions on the main political opposition party, the media, and freedom of expression in general.”
The standup comedian Deniz Göktaş was arrested and put in pre-trial detention after arriving at Istanbul airport from a holiday, and he was charged with “insulting the president” and “denigrating religious values” in relation to a show in which he referred to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as a dictator.
Authorities also blocked a cruise ship operated by Atlantis from docking in the coastal town of Aydın, and Patti LuPone wrote that “The Atlantis cruise I am performing on next week has been banned from entering Turkey … simply because of who is onboard.”
Arrests, Tear Gas, and Lawyers
As the July 7-8 NATO summit approached, Turkish authorities detained more than 100 people on Sunday during an anti-NATO march organized by the Communist Party of Turkey (Türkiye Komünist Partisi, TKP) in Ankara’s Kızılay Square, and police used tear gas to break up the protest.
The Jerusalem Post said the arrests raised “the familiar question about President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government: Where does summit security end, and where does a crackdown on dissent begin?” and it reported that demonstrators carried party flags and chanted against NATO’s presence in Turkey.
In Ankara overnight raids on June 22-23, Human Rights Watch said Turkish police arrested at least 209 people, including political activists, lawyers, an academic, and journalist and LGBT activist Yıldız Tar.
The Jerusalem Post also reported that Turkish prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 241 suspects in investigations linked to Islamic State and far-left groups, including DHKP-C, MLKP, and TKP/ML, while Human Rights Watch said the detentions showed Turkey’s “ruthless intolerance of freedom of speech and assembly.”
Media Access and Political Pressure
Ahead of the summit, Turkish authorities detained journalists including Buse Söğütlü of T24 and Ceren Erdoğdu of OdaTV, and Söğütlü’s lawyer Erman Öztürk told Agence France-Presse: “We believe it is linked to the Nato summit.”
““We believe it is linked to the Nato summit.””
DW reported that Turkish police arrested several journalists, rights activists, academics and members of leftist groups as the government led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stepped up security operations in the run-up to a NATO summit taking place in Ankara on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Reporters Without Borders’ Turkey representative Erol Onderoglu condemned what he called “indiscriminate, arbitrary and chaotic operations launched ahead of the NATO summit,” saying they “clearly threaten the reputation and safety of journalists.”
DW added that the Turkish Journalists' Association said it was “unacceptable for journalists to be placed under pressure and attempted to be silenced through the threat of detention,” while NATO said accreditation decisions for host-country summits rely on the host government’s security assessments.