{"id":360543,"date":"2025-08-20T22:49:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T22:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/360543\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T22:49:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T22:49:17","slug":"eu-voices-concern-over-turkeys-pressure-on-press-freedom-in-northern-cyprus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/360543\/","title":{"rendered":"EU voices concern over Turkey’s pressure on press freedom in northern Cyprus"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European Commission expressed concern on Wednesday about attempts to restrict press freedom in the Turkish Cypriot community, following disputed reports that Turkey had sought the extradition of veteran journalist \u015eener Levent, the Cyprus Mail reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Commission Executive Vice President for Cohesion Raffaele Fitto said the European Union \u201cviews with concern attempts to undermine freedom of expression and media pluralism in the Turkish Cypriot community.\u201d He was responding to a parliamentary question by Cypriot MEP Costas Mavrides.<\/p>\n

Media reports in July had claimed that Levent, a longtime critic of Turkey, had been ordered to appear before prosecutors in Ankara within 10 days or face extradition. That deadline has since passed, and no extradition request has been filed. The Turkish Cypriot \u201cforeign ministry\u201d denied the reports, calling them \u201cdisinformation,\u201d according to the Turkish Cypriot news agency Tak.<\/p>\n

Levent, who for years ran the Afrika newspaper in northern Cyprus, has faced repeated legal action over his work. The disputed extradition reports were linked to a cartoon published in Afrika in December 2017 that depicted a Greek statue urinating on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan. A Turkish court later sentenced Levent in absentia to one year in prison for \u201cinsulting\u201d Erdo\u011fan, though a court in northern Cyprus acquitted him of related charges.<\/p>\n

Cyprus has been divided since a Turkish military intervention in 1974 following a coup backed by Greece. The northern third of the island has since been administered by a Turkish Cypriot authority, which declared itself the \u201cTurkish Republic of Northern Cyprus\u201d in 1983 and is recognized only by Turkey. The European Union and the international community regard the Republic of Cyprus \u2014 an EU member state \u2014 as the island\u2019s sole legitimate government.<\/p>\n

Fitto said Turkey, as a candidate for EU membership and a member of the Council of Europe, is expected to respect its commitments on human rights. \u201cThe targeting of media and journalists runs counter to these commitments,\u201d he said. \u201cThe EU has consistently underlined that Turkey urgently needs to reverse the negative trend of recent years and make tangible progress in upholding fundamental human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides wrote to EU leaders expressing \u201cstrong concern\u201d over Levent\u2019s case. He stressed that Turkish Cypriots, as citizens of the Republic of Cyprus and the EU, are entitled to full protection of their rights and urged Brussels to closely monitor the situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Commission expressed concern on Wednesday about attempts to restrict press freedom in the Turkish Cypriot community,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187,1699],"class_list":{"0":"post-360543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european","11":"tag-european-union"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115063538623850761","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}