Turkey's Women Journalists Speak Out

Welcome to IWPR’s Frontline Update, your go-to source to hear from journalists and local voices at the front lines of conflict.

 THE BIG PICTURE  

Amid growing authoritarianism and deteriorating media freedom in Turkey, women journalists face particular challenges to participate fully in the profession.

Yet amid workplace exclusion and harassment, they have vital stories to tell and a critical role to play in strengthening excellence and openness in Turkish journalism.

A new IWPR initiative, the Women Journalists’ Network, is supporting women journalists to enhance their skills, overcome social traditions and build networks to increase their voices and their stories across the Turkey media.

 VOICES FROM THE FRONTLINE 

"I want to be able to speak more locally about the problems that women here face," Burcu Özkaya Günaydın, a journalist who covers the country’s southeast, told IWPR. Her region is still dealing with the impact of the devastating earthquakes that hit two years ago, and she explained that there remains resistance to telling the full story.

"Many media outlets are under government control. They don't want to show ongoing problems. With the help of the network and other colleagues, I find alternative ways to tell the stories that need to be told."

"We all put up a fight to continue doing our jobs, but women deal with discrimination on top of everything," Burcu Özkaya Günaydın, a journalist who covers the country’s southeast, told IWPR.

“We can support each other to have a level playing field.” As well as networking opportunities, monthly workshops around the country cover issues such as legal aid, AI tools, or negotiating newsroom challenges. In just a few months, the Women Journalists’ Network has expanded to include 40 members, with keen interest from across the country.

"For the first time, I felt like I'm not alone," said freelance journalist Rabia Çetin.

 WHY IT MATTERS 

"We've been conducting workshops for journalists in the country for years, and even though it's not a bed of roses for anyone, we realized we need to do more to fight the obstacles women journalists face," said Gonca Tokyol, IWPR Turkey editor and the Network’s coordinator.

“To give women journalists a chance of competition with their male colleagues, we focus on capacity-building, but our efforts are not limited to that,” Tokyol explained. “While connecting women journalists who work all around the country, we see how some struggles are the same everywhere, and we create joint solutions altogether."

 THE BOTTOM LINE 

IWPR has trained hundreds of Turkish media workers and supports Inside Turkey, a multimedia platform for independent journalists to provide insight on social and political realities at a critical juncture in their country’s history.  

In Turkey, as in many other regions, social traditions and discrimination against women plays a key role in a wider pushback against good governance, democracy and economic development. Around the world, the voices of women are vital to build a stable and open media environment in which democratic values can flourish.