The noticeable increase in the number of imprisoned journalists in the past three years drew national and international attention to the problems of press freedom in Turkey. Arrests of distinguished reporters of Turkey's mainstream media, along with the ongoing limitations on the freedom of Kurdish and socialist press, caused the country to be referred as "the world's biggest prison for journalists" by the non-governmental press freedom organizations such as Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Statements of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government authorities claiming that the imprisoned journalists are "not journalists but terrorists," and their reluctance to amend the laws that cause hundreds of journalists to be jailed led to questioning the influence of politics on journalist imprisonments.;This study explores the problems of press freedom with a focus on imprisoned journalists. Based upon in-depth interviews with journalists who were behind bars in the last decade, this study aims to answer the questions of what has changed in terms of freedom of expression in the last decade under AKP rule, for what obvious and underlying reasons the journalists are imprisoned, whether censorship has been a part of the problems of press freedom in the last decade, and how limitations on the freedom of expression affect the public.
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