Journalist and judge clash in Turkey opposition newspaper trial

ISTANBUL: A judge ejected one of Turkey’s most respected investigative journalists from court Monday and ruled that he and three other suspects should remain in jail, in the controversial trial of staff from the main opposition newspaper.

It was one of the angriest exchanges so far in the trial on terror charges of 17 current and former writers, cartoonists and executives from Cumhuriyet (‘Republic’), which has raised alarm over press freedom under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The trial began on July 24, and after several conditional releases in previous hearings, four of the suspects remain behind bars.

The judge ordered the four of them — investigative journalist Ahmet Sik, the paper’s chairman Akin Atalay, editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu and accountant Emre Iper — to stay in jail, defence lawyer Kemal Aytac told AFP.

The next hearing will be on March 9 and take place in the Silivri prison complex, outside Istanbul, rather than the city’s main courthouse where the trial has been heard until now.

Earlier in the hearing, Sik was ordered to leave the court by the judge because of his ‘political’ defence statement that condemned the government and claimed it treated its critics as ‘terrorists’.

“There is a judiciary controlled by the government that is translating this ‘terrorist’ term into preposterous accusations,” Sik, who has now been in prison for 360 days, told the court. — AFP