A series of initiative have been organised to highlight the problems and repression faced by journalists in Turkey.

The Association of Free Journalists will hold a rally today in Istanbul to ask freedom for their colleagues from Kurdish and independent media in prison. The next hearing of the trial agains journalists of Kurdish media Özgür Gündem, Dicle News Agency, Azadiya Welat, Demokratik Modernite and Fırat Distribution is scheduled for Monday 2 December.

46 workers of the Kurdish press, including Dicle News Agency (DİHA), Fırat News Agency (ANF), Özgür Gündem, Azadiya Welat, Demokratik Modernite and Fırat Distribution, were arrested in the scope of a so-called KCK (Kurdistan Communities Union) operation on 20 December 2011. Twenty among them are under arrest ever since.

As well as the rally (today in Istanbul's Galatasaray Square) the Association of Free Journalist have organised a press meeting in Diyarbakır earlier today.

The program of a week full of initiatives have been disclosed at the press conference. Tomorrow, Sunday, there will be the official opening of the offices of the Association of Free Journalists in Diyarbakır.
The program includes the commemoration of the bombing, on 3 December 1994, of the premises belonging to Özgür Ülke (Free Country), daily independent Kurdish newspaper.

Member of staff Ersin Yıldız lost his life in Istanbul Central Office of Özgür Ülke, while the Ankara office was destroyed. A bomb-loaded truck exploded under the building leaving 23 reporters and staff members injured. On top of that 23 other journalists were arrested.
The subsequent investigation, carried out by the Turkish authorities, failed to solve the case. The attack happened just after the then Prime Minister Tansu Çiller openly talked of the need to ‘get rid of Özgür Ülke’.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned Turkey but no one was ever found guilty or arrested for the attack.
Despite being hardly hit Özgür Ülke never stopped its publication. Thanks to the solidarity of the many, the paper was able to come out the very next day of the attack. The headline read "this fire also burns you.”

Solidarity was expressed by other members of the press, intellectuals and artists. They sold Özgür Ülke on the streets even though a confiscation order was issued by prosecutors.