The National Union of Journalists have condemned the imprisonment by Turkey of Pelin Ünker, a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
Ünker was working on the Paradise Papers investigation into offshore tax havens when a Turkish court in Istanbul sentenced her to 13 months’ imprisonment for defamation and insult.
The NUJ reported that her work had revealed details of the business activities of the country’s former prime minister and his sons.
NUJ general secretary, Michelle Stanistreet, said; “This is yet another example of the blatant mistreatment of journalists by the state in president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey. The NUJ will do all it can to lobby against this unjust sentence and work to put pressure on the UK government to condemn this and the imprisonment of many other journalists in Turkey.”
The NUJ added that it had “adopted” Ayşe Düzkan, a member of the board of Disk-Is one of the NUJ’s sister unions in Turkey, as an act of solidarity when she and her colleagues were sentenced to prison last month.
This article was originally written for Kevin’s media website, News on News
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