On August 26, 2022, the Committee to Protect Journalists joined the International Press Institute and 17 Turkish and international groups in a joint statement calling for Turkey’s Press Ad Agency, the state regulator of government advertisements in print media, to reverse its cancellation of advertisements carried by the leftist daily Evrensel.
In the statement, the groups urged the agency reinstate the advertising, noting that the ads were a “vital source” of the paper’s income. The groups stated that the Press Ad Agency has “a regulatory duty to act as an independent and fair distributor of public ads, and not to facilitate censorship through suppressing critical news outlets.”
The statement also noted that the Constitutional Court of Turkey decided on August 10 that the agency has been arbitrarily banning advertisements in critical print outlets including Evrensel.
The full statement is available here.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.