Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Co-Chair Pervin Buldan and Group Deputy Chair Saruhan Oluç visited the offices of JINNEWS and Mezopotamya News Agency (MA) in Ankara after the violent detention of 11 journalists as a result of police raids on both agencies and the imprisonment of 9 of them last week.

Speaking here, HDP Co-Chair Pervin Buldan noted that the arrests came shortly after the censorship law passed by the parliament. She remarked that the censorship law and the arrests aimed at preventing journalists from revealing truths to the public in Turkey.

“The arrested journalists make news to reveal the truth to the public,” Buldan said, adding that “Journalists cannot be silenced, and the truth will be conveyed to the people.”

Speaking after, journalist Hüseyin Aykol said, “Currently, 12 of our colleagues are in prison. The number of our friends jailed in Diyarbakır and Ankara is 28. Thus, 40 of our friends are behind bars. Moreover, the trials of nearly 160 colleagues are still going on. The so-called 'KCK Press Trial' also continues. About 160 journalists are on trial in similar cases. There are 200 journalists facing a government crackdown and there are people who could be jailed at any moment. But despite all the pressures, we have been publishing our newspapers for 33 years. Elections are approaching. As the HDP will play a key role, they are trying in advance to reduce the number of journalists who will follow the election campaigns of the party. In the same way we did overcome the previous crackdowns, we will overcome this one, too.”

HDP Group Deputy Chair Saruhan Oluç said: “The free press has not been and will not be silenced. We have no doubt about this. They want to reduce us to silence during the election process. This crackdown will, of course, be overcome and the free press will continue to work. They did everything they could in the past, and they have now started to repeat the same things. If such pressures increase as people are set to go to the polls, which is a possibility, everyone with a smartphone must work like a reporter and convey the truths they witness so these can be worked on and developed by journalists.”