When Turkish police stormed the Koza-Ipek publishing house last week, closing down two daily papers and two TV channels in a forest of shields and batons, throwing reporters out of work in a storm of Twitter repulsion, they did something worse than publicly threaten the freedom of Turkey’s free press. Again. (That freedom is a battered, bedraggled thing in any case. Heaven knows why Angela Merkel talks about EU fast-tracks and the like.)
No, it’s the second phase of Koza-Ipek suppression that sticks in the gullet: the appointment of a “trustee panel” to oversee what’s written and broadcast, and insist on what’s not. The word “trustee” still tries to mean independent, honest and true. Watch glumly whilst Istanbul brutality debases it …
