It was a crime to even claim to be Kurdish in the past. Elected mayors were jailed simply for saying they were ethnic kurds. Wearing a headscarf was illegal in schools, courts, etc. Even an AKP president’s wife was stopped from wearing a headacarf in a public hospital while visiting a wounded soldier!
In a way, I guess its a sign of Turkey and AKP’s success that we are now being held to European standards. There are 100 journalists in jail currently. Previous adminsitrations would have simply sent the government deatb squad to their doors and ended the matter rather more swiftly rather than subject itself to such Western critism over public statistics.
As far as numbers of imprisoned journalists are concerned, Chinese standards would be an improvement. 150 journalists[1] doesn't sound like that much, until you realize that's something like half the global number...
[1] http://europeanjournalists.org/turkey-journalists-in-jail/
There's a (German) article[1] by Günther Nollau, former president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, that might be of interest. The title translates to something like Sympathy alone is no criminal offence.
I have only cursorily followed what has been happening in Turkey, but newspapers getting shut down, rulings by the constitutional court getting ignored and a president who unironically cited Nazi Germany as inspiration for a functioning presidential system raise quite a few alarm bells...
http://www.dw.com/en/europol-probes-islamic-state-created-so...
If you like there is plenty and increasing and opposite to what NY Times claim they are all free to write and be communicated:
http://www.abcgazetesi.com/ http://halktv.com.tr/ http://www.diken.com.tr/
Sorry for them, they are not publishing in English. For your information take a look at this kind of news they report: http://www.diken.com.tr/thy-yakit-krizini-yalanladi-haber-ge...
They even report a delay, how come they will be silenced?