Trial begins in Turkey of staff from anti-Erdogan daily
ISTANBUL: Directors and journalists from one of Turkey’s most respected opposition newspapers went trial yesterday after spending over eight months behind bars in a case which has raised new alarm over press freedoms under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The suspects were detained from October last year under the state of emergency implemented after the July 15, 2016 failed coup blamed on the US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen.
A total of 17 staff of the newspaper – including writers, cartoonists and executives – are going on trial at the imposing palace of justice in Istanbul.
The trial got underway with defendants reading out their identities inside a courtroom crammed with supporters, an AFP journalist said.
Earlier, supporters released dozens of multicoloured balloons outside the courthouse, chanting: “Don’t be silenced! A free media is a right!”
If convicted, the defendants face varying terms of up to 43 years in jail.
The opposition fears the state of emergency has been used to go after anyone who dares defy the government and the trial is seen as a test for press freedoms under Erdogan.
Turkey ranks 155th on the latest Reporters Without Borders (RSF) world press freedom index, below Belarus and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
According to the P24 press freedom group, there are 166 journalists behind bars in Turkey, most of whom were arrested under the state of emergency.
Erdogan, however, insisted in an interview earlier this month there were just “two real journalists” behind bars in Turkey.
In an extraordinary coincidence the day of the trial opening, July 24, is Turkey’s annual national day of the press, marking the end of censorship in the Ottoman Empire.
Cumhuriyet (Republic), which was set up in 1924 and is Turkey’s oldest mainstream national title, has been a thorn in the side of Erdogan in recent years.
It is one of the few genuine opposition voices in the press, which is dominated by strongly pro-government media and bigger mainstream dailies that are increasingly wary of challenging the authorities.
Those appearing in court include some of the best known names in Turkish journalism including the columnist Kadri Gursel, the paper’s editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu and the respected cartoonist Musa Kart.
Also being tried in the case is the investigative journalist Ahmet Sik who in 2011 wrote an explosive book ‘The Imam’s Army’ exposing the grip Gulen’s movement had on the Turkish state.
Eleven of the 17 suspects including Gursel, Sabuncu, Kart and Sik, are held in jail with the other six free.
Being tried in absentia in the case is the paper’s former editor-in-chief Can Dundar, who was last year handed a five-year-and-10-month jail term over a front-page story accusing the government of sending weapons to Syria.
He has now fled Turkey for Germany. — AFP