Media defenders label terrorism case ‘a mockery’

ISTANBUL — A media advocacy group on Monday accused Turkey’s president of trying to silence the country’s main opposition newspaper and the free press generally, as the second hearing in the trial of staff members of the paper began Monday.

Christophe Deloire, the secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders, called the case against Turkey’s pro-secular Cumhuriyet newspaper “a mockery of justice.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “succeeded in suppressing pluralism and free press in this country. There are only a few remaining free media and we have to defend them,” he said.

Deloire spoke outside Silivri prison on the outskirts of Istanbul, where five Cumhuriyet employees are being held in pretrial detention.

Prosecutors have charged 19 employees of the paper with “sponsoring terror organizations,” including Kurdish militants, a far-left group and the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom the government blames for a failed coup last year. Gulen denies any involvement.

Emre Iper, a jailed accountant for Cumhuriyet, denied during testimony Monday that he had downloaded ByLock — an encrypted messaging application allegedly used by Gulen’s network. He also rejected claims that he supported the coup through tweets. His case was recently added to the trial.

“I’m not a terrorist. No Cumhuriyet staff is a terrorist,” he said.

More than 50,000 people have been jailed in the aftermath of the bloody July 15, 2016, coup attempt for alleged links to Gulen and terror groups. But critics say the crackdown has been widened to quash opposition voices, including journalists, activists and parliamentarians who have been put behind bars.

The government insists that none of the accused is in prison for journalistic work.