Jailed journalist Kadri Gürsel nominated UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Prize

ISTANBUL

The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has nominated prominent Turkish journalist Kadri Gürsel, who has been in jail for 116 days, for the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize.

His wife, Nazire Kalkan Gürsel, announced the nomination via her official Twitter account.

Gürsel is one of 10 people currently arrested in the “terrorism” investigation targeting daily Cumhuriyet, arrested on Nov. 5, 2016 along with editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu, caricaturist Musa Kart, and Cumhuriyet Foundation board members Güray Tekin Öz, Mustafa Kemal Güngör, Turhan Günay, Hakan Kara, Önder Çelik and Bülent Utku. The CEO of Cumhuriyet, Akın Atalay, was also arrested on Nov. 12, 2016. 

The arrested figures are accused of “committing crimes on behalf of” the PKK and the network of U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen.

Created by UNESCO’s Executive Board in 1997, the annual UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize honors a person, organization or institution that has made an outstanding contribution to the defense or promotion of press freedom anywhere in the world, and especially when this has been achieved in the face of danger. 

The prize is named in honor of Guillermo Cano Isaza, a Colombian journalist who was assassinated in front of the offices of his newspaper, El Espectador, in Bogotá, in December 1986. It is funded by the Cano Foundation (Colombia) and the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation (Finland).