TURKEY COUP PRESS TRIAL RESUMES
Seventeen staff on opposition newspaper facing ‘terror’ charges
Staff from Turkey’s main opposition daily newspaper faced court yesterday as their trial on “terror” charges resumed.
Seventeen current and former writers, cartoonists and executives from Cumhuriyet are being tried on charges that supporters have called absurd in a case that opened in Istanbul in July.
For government critics, the case is emblematic of the erosion of freedoms after last year’s failed coup, when Ankara began a crackdown on those with claimed links to the plotters, and its opponents.
The secular daily is one of the few voices in the Turkish media to oppose president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
On July 28, an Istanbul court freed seven of the newspaper’s staff after 271 days, including respected cartoonist Musa Kart and books supplement editor Turhan Gunay.
But some of its most prominent staff remain in custody, including commentator Kadri Gursel, investigative journalist Ahmet Sik, editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu and chief executive Akin Atalay.
Eight other people have been charged but are not being held in prison.
Sik has been behind bars for 255 days while the other three have been jailed for 316. If convicted, they face sentences of up to 43 years.
Sik is the author of The Imam’s
Army, a 2011 book about how followers of Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen infiltrated the Turkish bureaucracy and built ties with the ruling party.
Mr Gulen, once a close ally of Mr Erdogan but now in self-imposed exile in the US, is wanted on charges of ordering the failed coup. He denies the charges.
Ankara has arrested more than 50,000 people on suspicion of links to his movement.
The second session of hearings will take place adjacent to the high-security Silivri prison on the outskirts of Istanbul, where the men are being held.
They are charged with using their position to support the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the ultra-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front and the Gulen movement. Ankara considers all three to be terrorist organisations.
Also on trial, but in his absence, is the paper’s former editor-in-chief Can Dundar, who was last year sentenced to five years and 10 months in jail for a story accusing the government of sending weapons to Syria. Dundar fled to Germany.
In the indictment, the newspaper was accused of an “intense perception operation” against Turkey and Mr Erdogan, using the tactics of an “asymmetric war”.
Its supporters say that Cumhuriyet has always been strongly opposed to the three organisations.
In Sunday’s edition of the paper, Asli Aydintasbas, a columnist and fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said this was the “symbolic trial” of this era.
“This case will go down in the history books as the most concrete and most absurd example of institutional failures and the problem of the judiciary in this period,” Aydintasbas said.
Cartoonist Kart on Saturday depicted a miserable Lady Justice dressed in white, waiting outside the Silivri complex holding pictures of those inside, with a speech bubble that read: “I am waiting for my sons”.
The P24 press freedom group says there are 170 journalists in Turkish jails.