Staff provisionally freed in Turkey

SEVEN staff from the Turkish opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet were provisionally freed on Saturday after nine months in jail, as calls intensified for the release of four journalists still behind bars.

An Istanbul court on Friday ordered the seven be released under judicial control, meaning they remain charged and will have to report to the authorities, but it is rare in Turkey for defendants in such cases to be sent back to jail.

A total of 17 staff from the newspaper – one of the few voices in the media in Turkey to oppose President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – had been on trial for aiding “terror” groups, accusations denounced as absurd by supporters.

But despite growing pressure from abroad but also within Turkey for the release of all the defendants, the most prominent journalists from the newspaper were ordered by the court on Friday to remain in jail.

The seven freed – including respected cartoonist Musa Kart, books supplement editor Turhan Gunay and the paper’s legal executives – left Silviri prison on the outskirts of Istanbul. They had been held for 271 days.

“We were taken away from the people we love, our relatives, our work,” said Kart after his release. But he added: “Believe me, during this period in jail we have felt no hatred, no rancour, we could not live with such thoughts.”

The staff are charged with supporting in their coverage three entities that Tur- key considers terror groups – the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the ultra-left Revol ut i onar y Peopl e’s Li bera t i on Party-Front, and the movement of Fethullah Gulen, the US-based preacher who Ankara accuses of ordering last year’s coup attempt.

The four remaining in custody include some of the biggest names in Turkish journalism: commentator Kadri Gursel, investigative journalist Ahmet Sik, the paper’s editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu and Chief Executive Akin Atalay.