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An organization that monitors freedom of the press is harshly critical of the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a new report, accusing it of waging "one of the world's biggest crackdowns on press freedoms in history," according to CNN.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists concludes 76 Turkish journalists are in prison, "at least 61 in direct relation to their work."

"Turkey's imprisonments surpass the next most-repressive nations, including Iran, Eritrea, and China," the watchdog group adds in the report published Monday.

The Turkish government has routinely defended its record by arguing that journalists have not been imprisoned for crimes related to their writing and reporting.

"Of all the people imprisoned in our country, the great majority of those who are tried to be linked with journalist identity are the ones who are deprived of their liberty on the grounds of serious offences such as membership of an armed terrorist organization, kidnapping, possession of (an) unregistered firearm and (a) hazardous substance, bombing and murder," wrote Justice Ministry Sadullah Ergin, in a July 10 letter that was published in an appendix to the committee's report.

But this is not the first time international journalist-freedoms organizations have criticized Turkey. The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders ranked Turkey 148 out of 179 countries -- below Russia and the Democratic Republic of Congo -- on its press freedoms index for 2011-2012.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 70% of the journalists imprisoned in Turkey are ethnic Kurds "charged with aiding terrorism by covering the views and activities of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK."