[2] Yet, it is difficult to obtain detailed information in particular on early cases, in order to determine whether the deaths had been assassinations directly linked to the profession of the victims.
It also appears that some people were not journalists by profession, but affiliated to certain publications as readers, vendors or even part-time publishers of political comments.
Yet, some of these killings were high-profile assassinations that contributed to the atmosphere of political violence (often termed "civil war") that the Turkish army used as the main reason for its intervention.
A bit more information is available on some of the 15 cases reported for this period: After the military coup of 1980 fewer journalists were killed in the fight between the radical left and the extreme right.
At the same time more and more civilians fell victim to extrajudicial killings, murders by unknown assailants (tr: faili meçhul), a term used in Turkish to indicate that the perpetrators were not identified because of them being protected by the State and cases of disappearance.
[15] Among Kurdish patriots (tr: yurtsever, often used as an acronym for sympathizers of the PKK by the state) the "tradition" that started with Özgür Gündem is often called "history of the free press".
The death of Metin Alataş in 2010 is also a source of disagreement – while the autopsy claimed it was suicide, his family and colleagues demanded an investigation.