{"id":48295,"date":"2010-11-02T04:16:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-02T04:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/2010\/11\/02\/german-commissioner-says-turkey-losing-ground-in-press-freedom-meets-with-dinks-wife\/"},"modified":"2010-11-02T04:16:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-02T04:16:00","slug":"german-commissioner-says-turkey-losing-ground-in-press-freedom-meets-with-dinks-wife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2010\/11\/02\/german-commissioner-says-turkey-losing-ground-in-press-freedom-meets-with-dinks-wife.html","title":{"rendered":"German Commissioner Says Turkey ‘Losing Ground’ in Press Freedom, Meets with Dink’s Wife"},"content":{"rendered":"

Markus L\u00f6<\/span>ning, the Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Aid at the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, exchanged views on press freedom and freedom of expression with a group of journalists in the course of his visit to Turkey, reports BIA News Center.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the meeting held at the German Consulate in Istanbul on Monday, L\u00f6<\/span>ning said, “All governments should protect press freedom.” Referring to the recent resignation of H\u00fc<\/span>rriyet newspaper editor-in-chief Oktay Ek\u015f<\/span>i, L\u00f6<\/span>ning indicated that it was unacceptable for a prime minister to target a journalist regardless of the topic.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

L\u00f6<\/span>ning also talked about his visit to the LGBT association LambdaIstanbul and emphasized the importance of opposing social gender based discrimination. The German Commissioner furthermore met Rakel Dink, wife of slain Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and expressed his concerns about the development of the related murder trial.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the coming days, L\u00f6<\/span>ning is going to talk to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Van (south-eastern Turkey) and NGOs. After that, the Human Rights Commissioner will meet officials in Ankara. He added that he was following up the progress of human rights in Turkey.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“The EU accession process became a mechanism of developing rights,” L\u00f6<\/span>ning said and emphasized that the same effect could be monitored for Greece, Spain, Portugal and countries in eastern Europe that joined the EU most recently.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

L\u00f6<\/span>ning appreciated progress on women rights, the Kurdish question and the abolishment of the military tutelage in Turkey and indicated that legal regulations should go hand in hand with practical implementations.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

L\u00f6<\/span>ning referred to press freedom indexes issued by Reporters without Borders and Freedom House and stressed the fact that Turkey was constantly losing ground on press freedom. He also mentioned the increasing number of trials opened against journalists and announced to monitor the situation.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The meeting was attended by journalists from bianet, Taraf, H\u00fc<\/span>rriyet Daily News, the Armenian Agos weekly and the Samanyolu newspaper.<\/p>\n


<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Markus L\u00f6ning also…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10,5],"tags":[703,18084,18083,18085,11397,15666],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48295"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}