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CJRColumbia Journalism Review

May/June 1993 | Contents

Follow-Up

THE TOLL IN TURKEY

by Stephen Franklin
Franklin is a reporter for the Chicago Tribune.

The murders of journalists in Turkey go on (see "The Killings in Turkey," CJR, January/February). The assassins' twelfth target since January 1992 was Ugur Mumcu, a gritty veteran investigative reporter for Cumhuiyet (Republic), one of Turkey's most respected newspapers. Known for his reports on Kurdish separatists, drug smuggling, and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Turkey, Mumcu was killed this past January by a car bomb. Then, in February, Kemal Kilic, a reporter for Ozgur Gundem (Free Agenda), was gunned down, the fifth contributor to that newspaper to die. As Andrew Yurkovsky noted in CJR, most of the journalist-victims worked for publications sympathetic to Turkey's large Kurdish minority. According to Helsinki Watch, no one has been charged in any of the killings.