ANKARA - Journalists Association of Turkey awarded the 2022 Press Freedom Awards to 16 Kurdish journalists arrested in Diyarbakır last month.

The Journalists Association of Turkey awarded the 2022 Press Freedom Award to 16 Kurdish journalists who were detained on June 8 and arrested on June 16 as a result of an operation based in Diyarbakır.

As for the Institutional Award, it has been bestowed on ‘The Resistance and Solidarity against the Censorship Act’ founded by press organizations struggling against the ‘Disinformation Act’ on the Parliamentary agenda which has been postponed to the new legislative year. 

In the statement about the awards, the TJA asserted thus:

“Sixteen Kurdish journalists were arrested in a period during which general elections were approaching, in order to prevent the free flow of information to citizens: Abdurrahman Öncü, Aziz Oruç, Elif Üngür, İbrahim Koyuncu, Lezgin Akdeniz, Mazlum Doğan Güler, Mehmet Ali Ertaş, Mehmet Şahin, Neşe Toprak, Ömer Çelik, Ramazan Geciken, Remziye Temel, Safiye Alagaş, Serdar Altan, Suat Doğuhan and Zeynel Abidin Bulut. Our award to them is also to all journalists whose practice is restrained and to all imprisoned journalists.

We present our Institutional Award to ‘Resistance and Solidarity Platform against the Censorship Act’ as a token of our gratitude for their struggle against even further censorship prepared as the Disinformation Act.”

The Awards Committee is composed of

*Adnan Özyalçıner (President of the Writers’ Union of Türkiye),

*Altan Öymen (Honorary President of TJA Honorary Board),

*Kenan Kocatürk (President of the Publishers’ Association of Türkiye),

*Nazan Moroğlu (Vice-President of İstanbul Bar Association),

*Prof. Dr. Nurçay Türkoğlu (Communications Professor),

*Sibel Güneş (General Secretary of TJA),

*Tuğrul Eryılmaz- (T24 Writer -representing the previous recipients of the Award),

*Turgay Olcayto (TJA President), and

*Zeynep Oral (President of PEN Türkiye Center).