Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accused the country's media of trying to undermine a nascent Kurdish peace process, according to a Reuters report.
The agency says he has called on journalists to censor themselves if they love their nation, a suggestion that has gone down badly with the press.
Erdoğan condemned an article in the daily Milliyet newspaper, which published a transcript of a meeting last month between Abdullah Ocalan and Kurdish politicians.
Ocalan, head of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) who has been in jail in since 1999, has been in peace talks with Turkey since October. The transcript revealed his apparent frustration with the peace process.
Erdoğan said: "If you are going to conduct this kind of journalism, then we don't need your journalism. We want a service to this nation. Whoever is working to sabotage this resolution process is against me, my friends and the government."
Journalists hit back. Ahmet Abakay, head of the Progressive Journalists Association, wrote: "Newspapers and television stations are not corporations tied to the government. Journalists are also not civil servants or officials of the prime ministry."
And Yusuf Kanli, a columnist for the daily Hurriyet, wrote: "It is not the business of a prime minister to yell in a bossy attitude and try to dictate what to report and not report."
Source: Reuters
