Prime Minister Erdogan, reacting to the critical wounding of a Turkish journalist during the bombing of the American Embassy in Ankara, used the occasion to attack those who defend Turkey’s imprisoned journalists:

As the justice ministry has said many times, a considerable portion of the imprisoned journalists belong to the DHKP-C,” the prime minister said [Turkish]. “Some are in [preventive] custody and some have been convicted. If the activist who blew himself up today had possessed a press card, they would have called him a journalist. They would have taken up his case, saying ‘look where the journalist got to’.

As Reporters Without Borders rightly  points out, “Combating terrorism is necessary and legitimate, but it is intolerably cynical to use this occasion to justify the abusive treatment of journalists, especially when a journalist is one of the victims.”

Prime Minister Erdogan needs to see this vital distinction.