Turkish court convicts 13 journalists on terrorism charges
A Turkish court convicted 13 employees of Cumhuriyet, Turkey’s oldest independent newspaper, of terrorism-related crimes on Wednesday, and handed down stiff sentences for several of them even while ordering the release of the newspaper’s chief executive.
The defendants — journalists, managers and a lawyer, most of whom had been released from jail during the monthslong trial — received sentences of two to seven years in prison, but they will remain free while their case are appealed.
The chief executive, Akin Atalay, the executive chairman of the Cumhuriyet Foundation, which manages the newspaper, was the last of the group still in jail. The court ordered his release on Wednesday evening, but he was barred from traveling abroad.
Mr. Atalay, along with several other defendants, was acquitted of a charge of misuse of authority but convicted of helping terrorist organizations. Supporters and press freedom groups denounced the verdicts as travesty of justice.
Despite the court’s ruling, the journalists remained defiant. “This neither scares me nor Cumhuriyet newspaper,” Murat Sabuncu, the newspaper’s editor in chief and one of those convicted, said in a statement after the verdict.
“I see this as an attack against us and against all the journalism community, against all our colleagues for us not to practice journalism in Turkey, to be scared while doing it,” Mr. Sabuncu added. “We can go to jail one more time if necessary. We will go on doing journalism with courage.”
The defendants convicted on Wednesday were part of a larger group of 18. Three were acquitted, and the cases of two others — as well as two not associated with the newspaper — will continue.
The case against Cumhuriyet began in 2016, as part of the widespread government crackdown against dissent in the aftermath of the failed coup in July of that year. Twelve of the group were arrested in early-morning police raids on their homes on Oct. 31, 2016.
The defendants were charged with lending support to several terrorist organizations, including the movement of an Islamist cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who is accused by the Turkish government of masterminding the failed coup of 2016 from exile in the United States; the Kurdish separatist movement; the Kurdistan Workers’ Party; and an extreme-left party known as the DHKP-C.
Prosecutors accused members of the group of helping terrorist organizations, through telephone and internet contacts, and in some cases through an encrypted telephone application called ByLock. The executives and board members were also accused of changing the editorial direction of the newspaper to support the groups.
The prosecutors had demanded lengthy prison sentences for all the defendants, ranging from seven years to 43 years.
The defendants and the management of Cumhuriyet denied all the charges and have accused the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of organizing a political trial to silence its critics.
Source: The New York Times
