Turkish forces halted a newspaper’s delivery trucks and inspected printing presses on Wednesday, making sure the publication did not run Charlie Hebdo images that the government might deem offensive to Muslims.
The Istanbul newspaper Cumhuriyet was ultimately allowed to hit the streets, but this shocking instance of prior restraint underscored tensions between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and free press advocates.
The NATO-member nation is officially secular, but its population is almost exclusively Muslim.
So when Cumhuriyet editors said they would republish works from Charlie Hebdo — the French satirical paper whose journalists and cartoonists were slaughtered by Islamic radicals last week — the Turkish publication was warned not to run any material that could be construed as offensive to Muslims.
Armed police on Wednesday stopped Cumhuriyet delivery trucks and checked papers to make sure there were no anti-Muslim words or images, according to the Central European News.
Hours earlier, security forces actually went inside the paper’s printing plant to inspect issues as they rolled off the presses, according to multiple European news outlets.
“We condemn the police’s censorship attempt against the Cumhuriyet daily,” the Turkish Journalists’ Union said. “We maintain that this practice is against the constitution and media laws.”
Editions of Cumhuriyet hit the streets unchanged.
They did not include any large pictures of the Charlie Hebdo cover — just small black-and-white images of the French satire’s front that were used as column headers by two writers, according to CEN.
Less controversial material from Charlie Hebdo was included inside a four-page spread.
Then later Wednesday, Turkish news website T24 printed a Turkish-translated version of Charlie Hebdo.
“T24 is publishing the latest issue of the magazine to show support for freedom of expression and solidarity against terrorism,” the site’s editors said. “Journalism in Turkey cannot be a profession of conditioned indifference and learned helplessness.”