Başak Çalı is Professor of International Law at the Hertie School of Governance and Director of the Center for Global Public Law at Koç University in Istanbul. Among the many positions she has held, she served as a Council of Europe expert on the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) since 2002. In several of her publications she deals with media freedom, often times with a focus on her home country, Turkey.

Prof. Cali has called for the European Court of Justice to take a more active and principled approach so that the court’s rulings in the spirit of media freedom actually lead to measures to protect journalists on the ground.