The US State Department Spokesman John Kirby criticized the situation of freedom of speech in Turkey. On 3 May at the daily briefing devoted to the Press Freedom Day , he said that Turkey is moving the wrong way , as the US had already said .

“We’ve talked about before that the trend we’re seeing in Turkey is not a good one. It’s not going in the right direction. I think I’ve described it as worrisome, and I think we still believe that. We don’t believe that restricting freedom of the press is healthy for any democracy, and yet, we still believe that Turkey can live up to all its democratic principles, the ones that are enshrined in its constitution, and we want to see them do that and we want to see Turkey succeed. We don’t believe the path to success, democratically speaking, is by harassment or – of the media or restricting their ability to do their job, and we’ve said that many, many times,” stated Kirby.

He stressed that this issue will be raised at the meetings with the Turkish leaders. According to Kirby , Turkey is an important partner for the United States , and therefore the US wants to see that Turkey is making a progress on the issue of freedom of the press .