In a statement Basque PEN Club expresses its concern and anger at the steps taken by Turkey against freedom of speech and basic human rights. Recalling how on 21st December 46 journalists and media workers from DIHA News Agency, Azadiya Welat, Etkin and Firat News Agencies and Özgür Gündem, as well as the homes of the journalists and employees have been arrested, the organization said "It is enough. Turkey has to give up the special laws emanating from the military Junta era and its attacks to democracy once and for all. Admitting the existence of the Kurdish reality is not enough anymore, as it could be two decades ago". The Basque PEN states that "in 2011 the freedom of speech remains totally restricted, millions of Kurds don’t have the smallest right to inform in and about their language and their reality without facing an endless harassment".

Azadiya Welat has been temporarily closed many times, and one of its many imprisoned journalists, the former editor-in-chief Vedat Kursun, was condemned to 166 years imprisonment in 2010 in an undemocratic trial witnessed by Basque PEN Club. This newspaper, the only one that millions of Kurds in Turkey can read in their mother language, was awarded by Basque PEN Club in 2010; its former owner Eser Uyansiz had to exile himself.

The Basque PEN Club "denounces the attitude of the Turkish state, and demands the respect for the freedom of speech, the end for the harassment and the special laws, and the freedom for the dozens of imprisoned journalists. At the same time, we would like to send our support and warmth to those reporters in prison. We send them our greatest admiration for their courage and their invaluable work overcoming the repression, and giving to their country and the world a newspaper in a special language suffering from the harshest conditions".