EU: “No Progress” report on Turkish media

 
 
This week’s publication by the European Commission of the 2014 Turkey Progress Report on Turkey’s membership application contains important criticisms of state media policy. Those institutions which come in for adverse comments include the TRT, Turkey’s public broadcasting corporation (described as having “displayed bias in its election coverage… in favour of the governing party and its candidate, the Prime Minister), as well as the “independence, predictability and transparency of the Information and Communication Technologies Authority.”  It complains of the excessive powers legislated to sub-branch of that authority, the Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TIB) which now have “excessive powers” leading to “further restrictions on the freedom of expression online”. And the report does not fail to mention TIB’s efforts in March to ban access to Twitter and You Tube – later overturned by the Constitutional Court.
 
Here you can read the full text of the report: