Turkey’s slide into authoritarianism continues

It took only a few hours for hope to turn to fresh despair. At lunchtime on Friday, the German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yucel was freed after more than a year in detention. An image of Yucel embracing his wife – who he had married while he was incarcerated – outside the concrete and razor-wire gates of Istanbul’s Silivri prison raced across social media, to widespread jubilation. But by the time the day’s evening call-to-prayer sounded, six other journalists had been convicted and jailed, three of them with aggravated life sentences.

All have been accused of supporting terrorist groups, either the Kurdish militants of the PKK or the Gulenists, the Islamic sect that President Erdogan accuses of launching the 2016 coup attempt. No-one is in jail for practising journalism, we are always told – though last year Erdogan himself said in an interview that any writer who publishes the words of terrorists can be considered a terrorist themselves.