Turkey in a State of Political Tumult vis-à-vis Its Accession Process, Freedom of Press and Human Rights Record

The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of current internal developments in Turkey on the local situation of human rights and freedom of press. Furthermore, this article examines these issues within a context of the European Union (EU) accession process. In order to provide an in-depth analysis, this paper implements and combines process tracing and controlled comparison methods. The data are mainly collected via several non-governmental and international organizations, specifically making use of human rights reports, progress reports, official statements and expert analyses. This article is divided into two key parts: the first part focuses on the Turkish internal political development and its external ramifications and the second part analyses Turkey’s human rights records and media freedoms. The article concludes that the significant deterioration in human rights and freedom of press was not triggered, but only significantly exacerbated by the 2016 coup attempt and that the current trend is unlikely to be reversed in a short-to-mid-term period.