Independent journalists and representatives of the Turkish television channels İlke TV (İlke TV) and NOW TV (NOW TV), as well as the newspaper “Cumhuriyet“ and the website “Medyascope“, expressed dissatisfaction over denied accreditations by NATO for the upcoming Alliance summit in Ankara on July 7 and 8, the website “Turkish Minute“ reported, quoted by BTA.
According to a publication by İlke TV on the media outlet's profile in Ex, journalists from the listed media outlets have received “unfounded“ accreditation denials for the upcoming meeting by the NATO Office of Strategic Communications, with the following message sent to those inquiring: “We regret to inform you that your media accreditation request cannot be approved at this time. We cannot discuss the reasons for this decision, which is final“.
In response to the denials, Turkish journalists expressed their dissatisfaction on social media.
Sharing the message with the denial of accreditation on her AX profile, Turkish journalist Duygu Güvenç wrote: “As a journalist who has covered NATO summits in Istanbul, Strasbourg/Kehl, Lisbon, Chicago and Brussels, who has also attended countless meetings of NATO foreign and defense ministers and who has followed dozens of NATO missions inside and outside the Alliance headquarters, I regret to say that I will not be able to cover this NATO summit in Ankara, the city where I live“.
“It seems that NATO is drawing names from a hat for accreditation. Experienced Turkish journalists in the field of security and defense are being rejected without explanation. "If NATO wants these decisions to be respected, it should at least explain the criteria behind them," Turkish journalist Levent Kemal wrote in Ex in a commentary on the subject.