ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened Turkish media with legal action over content “incompatible with national and moral values,” in a move seen by critics as an attempt to stifle the dissent.
He also sacked his justice minister and the head of the state of the statistics agency after it published official data showing last year’s inflation rate hit a 19-year high.
The Turkish leader said in a decree that “it has become requisite to take necessary measures to protect (families, children and the youth) against harmful media content.”
He urged authorities to take “legal action” against the “destructive effects” of some media content — without revealing what that would entail.
Critics said it was another bid to crack down on freedom of speech in the run-up to elections next year.
Faruk Bildirici, veteran journalist and media ombudsman, on Twitter accused Erdogan of declaring a “state of emergency against the media”.
Rights groups routinely accuse Turkey of undermining media freedom by arresting journalists and shutting down critical media outlets, especially since Erdogan survived a failed coup attempt in July 2016.
In an earlier decree on Saturday, Erdogan sacked state statistics agency chief Sait Erdal Dincer.
It was just the latest in a series of economic dismissals by Erdogan, who has fired three central bank governors since July 2019.
Erdogan has railed against high interest rates, which he believes cause inflation — the exact opposition of conventional economic thinking.
The 2021 inflation figure of 36.1 percent released by Dincer angered both the pro-government and opposition camps.
The opposition said the number was underreported, claiming that the real cost of living increases were at least twice as high.
Erdogan meanwhile reportedly criticised the statistics agency in private for publishing data that he felt overstated the scale of Turkey’s economic malaise.
Dincer seemed to sense his impending fate.
“I sit in this office now, tomorrow it will be someone else,” he said in an interview with the business newspaper Dunya earlier this month.