Leading Turkish feminist writer Ayşe Düzkan announced in a column on Monday that she would surrender to authorities to serve an 18-month prison sentence handed down for symbolically acting as the editor-in-chief of the now-closed Kurdish Özgür Gündem newspaper for one day.
In her column for the Yeni Yaşam daily, Düzkan pointed out that currently more than 50,000 people are imprisoned in Turkey for political reasons. “Around 150 of them are journalists. I say ‘around’ because the figure keeps changing,” she added before surrendering herself to serve her sentence for acting as the editor-in-chief of a Kurdish daily for one day.
According to data from global media watch groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Turkey is the world’s largest jailer of journalists. However, it is difficult to keep track of the numbers since the detention and release of journalists and media workers are in a constant state of flux.