Turkey intensifies crackdown on public life in run-up to Nato summit in Ankara

More than 200 arrested in raids, comedian and journalists jailed, gay-friendly cruise turned away and protests banned

Authorities in Turkey have widened a crackdown on public life, arresting more than 200 people during raids across Ankara last month, jailing a comedian and blocking a cruise ship carrying LGBTQ+ passengers from docking in the run-up to the Nato summit in the capital.

The arrests followed a ban on demonstrations in Ankara that was put in place until 10 July. Human Rights Watch (HRW) said this was evidence of Turkey’s “ruthless intolerance of freedom of speech and assembly”. The watchdog group said the Nato summit, which starts on Tuesday, was taking place in the context of intensifying violations of basic rights, “including far-reaching restrictions on the main political opposition party, the media, and freedom of expression in general”.

Last week, the standup comedian Deniz Göktaş was arrested and put in pre-trial detention after arriving at Istanbul airport from a holiday. Göktaş was charged with “insulting the president” and “denigrating religious values” in relation to a show in which he referred to the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as a dictator and made jokes about suicide bombers. The performance took place in Istanbul on 1 June and a recording was released on YouTube on 24 June. The video has been viewed nearly 9m times.

According to the Turkish news outlet Bianet, Göktaş attempted to explain his jokes in his testimony to prosecutors, telling them: “The word ‘dictator’ is a political term, a topic frequently discussed in public, and I have no intention of insulting or belittling anyone with this statement.”

In another recent incident, authorities in the coastal town of Aydın blocked a cruise ship operated by Atlantis, a company specialising in gay-friendly holidays, from docking on the grounds that people on board were “known for behaviours” that did “not align with the structure of our society and our moral values”.

The US actor and singer Patti LuPone, who was scheduled to perform on the cruise, wrote in a social media post: “The Atlantis cruise I am performing on next week has been banned from entering Turkey … simply because of who is onboard.”

This year, Reporters Without Borders accused Turkey of using “all possible means… to undermine critics” as the country fell to 163rd place out of 180 countries on the NGO’s press freedom index.

Right groups and opposition parties have long accused the Turkish authorities of muzzling free speech in the country, where prosecutions for criticising Erdoğan have risen sharply in recent years.

On Sunday, two journalists were arrested: Buse Söğütlü, the international news editor at online newspaper T24; and Ceren Erdoğdu, a journalist at OdaTV. Söğütlü’s lawyer Erman Öztürk told Agence France-Presse: “We believe it is linked to the Nato summit.” Ezgi Onalan, the head of the Istanbul branch of the Association of Contemporary Lawyers, was also detained, the rights group announced on X.

Ankara’s prosecutor’s office said the arrests in late June, which took place during dawn raids, would “decipher the action and activities of terrorist organisations”, and accused those held of links to a number of of socialist and Marxist groups as well as the Islamic State.

HRW said authorities had provided no evidence of any crimes committed by people accused of terrorism. Among those detained on suspicion of membership of terrorist groups were the journalist and LGBTQ+ activist Yıldız Tar, two lawyers, an academic and 14 members of an environmental organisation focused on reforestation.

Western leaders have mostly avoided publicly raising concerns about Turkey’s record on rights and freedoms, instead focusing on increasing security ties with the regional military ⁠power and big arms exporter.

Some critics of the Erdoğan government believe the relative western silence encourages its authoritarian slide, isolates Turkey’s opposition and ignores Nato’s founding principles of democracy and rule of law. “It ​remains important for the west to continue to comment on the degradation of democratic institutions in ‌Turkey because the course is not irrevocably set, Turkey is ‌not beyond the pale,” David Satterfield, a former US ambassador to Ankara, told Reuters last week.

“It’s important that Turks hear others talking about their system in this way,” said Satterfield, who is now director of the Baker Institute for Public Policy, a thinktank housed at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

In the past year, Turkey’s primary opposition Republican People’s party (CHP) has been subjected to a sustained crackdown. Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, has been arrested and put on trial, as have hundreds of other municipal opposition politicians. In late May, a court unseated the leader of the CHP in a move that critics feared was intended to stifle the party’s ability to challenge Erdoğan.

İmamoğlu is standing trial on an array of graft charges. The CHP says he is its chosen candidate for president, even if that means he runs for office from prison.

The 56-year-old was ejected from the courtroom during a hearing last week after clashing with the judge, who said he would enforce a 9 July deadline to hear statements from the defence.