Journalist Özer's Accreditation Case Pending for 1 Year

The Prime Ministry Press Centre banned the accreditation of diplomacy journalist Sultan Özer from the Evrensel ('Universal') daily more than 1 year ago on 10 November 2008. Because of this, Özer can neither follow up on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, nor can he cover the General Assembly of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Regarding a general application for the cancellation of the Prime Ministry accreditation procedure, the Ankara 9th Administrative Court decided for a lack of authorization and sent the file to the State Council.

"I cannot enter the Prime Ministry; I could have been sacked by now"

Özer told bianet that he filed a court case with the demand to stop the procedure, but even after 1 year the journalist's case has not yielded any results yet. "The judiciary works very slowly. If I worked for a different institution I might have been made redundant in the meantime since I cannot do my work. I cannot enter the AKP General Centre or the Prime Ministry", Özer said.

Özer indicated that the newspaper lawyers applied to the administrative court for the abolishment of the Prime Ministry accreditation ban, not only for himself but in general. His own file is currently at the stage of the State Council. Özer criticized that he cannot do anything else but waiting for the decision.

Karakuş's "accreditation ban" cancelled

Finally, the same court decided to cancel the repeal of Milliyet newspaper journalist Abdullah Karakuş's Prime Ministry accreditation.

In the unanimous decision it was said that a repeal of the accreditation was against press freedom and unlawful. It was emphasized that the Prime Ministry's application would have an "intimidating" effect on the journalists' will to make news. In the decision it was also mentioned that Karakuş's accreditation was repealed because of 2 news articles which supposedly opposed the principles of the press-related profession.

The comments of the European Court of Human Rights on "press freedom" were also summarized in the decision as follows: "In news items relying on facts and seeking responsibility for proof, good intentions have to be accepted for the journalist's defence. A journalist must not be punished if he or she has enough reason to believe that a certain information is true".

Together with Sultan Özer and Abdullah Karakuş, also the accreditation of Hasan Tüfekçi  and Turan Yılmaz from Hürriyet newspaper, Fatma Çözen from Star Television and Ali Ekber Ertürk from Akşam newspaper had been repealed in November 2008. (EÖ/VK)