Expert gives lecture on Turkish press reforms

The lecture you missed

Defne Jones, a central Eurasian studies professor, spoke Thursday about the decline of the press in Turkey. The lecture, “Constitutional Reforms in Turkey: Who’s in Power?”, was sponsored by the Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies Chair Kemal Silay and the Turkish Studies Program.

Most surprising quote

“It is comforting to think of democratization as a switch that, once turned on, can never be turned off,” Silay said. “As we have seen, however, democracy operates more like a thermometer than a switch.”

Behind bars
Turkey’s prisons housed 57 journalists in 2011, the most in the world. The first prison sentences began in 2005. Freedom of the press has steadily declined since the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi came to power.