Azadiya Welat (Kurdish for: "Freedom of the Country") was a newspaper in the Kurdish language published in Turkey. It was shut down on 28 August 2016 when police raided the newspaper's headquarters in Diyarbakir, taking all 27 staff into custody.[1]
The paper was first published as a weekly newspaper with the name Welat in Istanbul on 22 February 1992.[2] In 1996 it began to be published with its current name, Azadiya Welat.[2] In 2003 the headquarters of the paper moved from Istanbul to Diyarbakır.[2] In 2006 it became a daily newspaper.[2]
Its editor-in-chief was sentenced to 3 years in prison in 2010.[3] A journalist who was distributing Azadiya Welat was murdered in 2014.[4]
Kurdish inmates in some Turkish jails were not allowed to receive the newspaper in 2007. This interdiction is justified by a reference to the law no. 5275.[5] In 2015, the European Court of Human Rights rules the unpredictability of how the law is applied is a violation of article 10 of the Convention.[6]