Turkey ranks in 149th place in the Reporters without Borders World Press Freedom Index, below Zimbabwe and Burma/Myanmar. In its 2014 report, Freedom House demoted Turkish media from being “partly free” to “not free.” Turkey remains the only nation in its European peer group to be so dishonored.

The session will consider the current state of the media in Turkey, taking as a reference point the October 2015 research paper by Andrew Finkel entitled Captured news media: the case of Turkey written for the Center for International Media Assistance of the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington.