EU lawmakers urge Turkey to clear DW journalist Bulent Mumay

The European Parliament slammed the sentencing of Turkish DW journalist Bulent Mumay as part of a "pattern of judicial harassment and censorship" against Turkey's "independent media" in a resolution passed on Thursday.

The coordinator of DW's Istanbul bureau was handed a 20-month suspended sentence in May last year for "obtaining and publishing personal data without permission." He began serving his term this June following an unsuccessful appeal.

The journalist had posted on social media about Met-Gun Insaat, a construction company with ties to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that had intervened in city politics and had public funds seized. His posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, defied an official order not to report on the issue.

Accusations against Mumay 'baseless', MEP says

On Thursday, EU lawmakers called on Turkish authorities to drop the charges against him and "all other arbitrarily detained media workers, political opponents, human rights defenders, civil servants and academics."

At a debate in Strasbourg on Wednesday, liberal lawmaker Lucia Yar of Slovakia described the case against Mumay as "baseless" and said it served "only one purpose: to intimidate him and other journalists who dare to investigate." Brave, critical voices like Mumay's were increasingly rare in Turkey, Yar stressed.

Particularly since a failed coup in 2016, the AKP government has embarked on a crackdown, jailing tens of thousands of dissidents. Ankara blamed the insurrection on supporters of the US-based Islamist preacher Fethullah Gulen, but journalists and unrelated opposition figures have also increasingly found themselves behind bars.

Nongovernmental organization Human Rights Watch has accused the president of "targeting perceived government critics and political opponents, profoundly undermining the independence of the judiciary, and hollowing out democratic institutions."

'Whole judicial system in Turkey has changed'

Mumay, who also writes for Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper and formerly for Turkish outlets like Hurriyet, learned in August that his appeal at an Istanbul regional court had been rejected. While not incarcerated and still working, the verdict means he must carefully watch his step.

"I shouldn't do anything which will make them crazy or make them angry. In this period, even if I just make a traffic accident and just get a one-day sentence, then that will mean jail for 20 months," he said.

These days, it's hard to know what stories might provoke a reaction, he told DW. "The whole judicial system in Turkey has changed a lot, so you can't forecast if it will make them angry or not. If you criticize the health system or if you criticize the roads in your city, then they can get angry." It doesn't need to be a scandal or corruption, he explained.

But that won't stop him doing his work. "I'm trying to be careful, but if I have a story, or if I want to give any statement or write something, I'm doing it," he said.

Mumay, who was already detained and released in the wake of the failed coup in 2016, isn't too afraid. He sees worse happening to other colleagues. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 45 journalists were imprisoned in Turkey as of the end of 2023.

Don't forget about repression in Turkey, Mumay urges

The EU has a complicated relationship with Ankara. Officially, Turkey is a candidate country to join the political community, though that bid has long been on ice as relations have soured.

EU politicians often condemn Turkey for democratic backsliding, but the bloc also pays its southern neighbor to accommodate asylum-seekers who would otherwise try to reach the EU. 

They also share some key foreign policy and counter-terrorism goals, for example in the Syrian conflict. Even if they don't see eye-to-eye on many issues, the EU relies on Turkey as a partner in the region.

Mumay welcomed the resolution from the European Parliament. There was a degree of hypocrisy in Western administrations' dealing with Ankara, he said. They often failed to push hard enough on domestic repression, he argued.

"Maybe nowadays, the Western world has bigger problems, with Russia, the energy crisis, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there's a priority list," he said. "But they shouldn't forget about what's going on in Turkey. Because Turkey doesn't [just] mean Erdogan. More than half of this country still looks to the west."

Edited by: Andreas Illmer