Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of May 5, 2019
Journalist sentenced to 10 months in prison An Istanbul court on May 7 sentenced Cansu Pişkin, a reporter for the leftist daily Evrensel, to 10 months in prison for “making a target of a civil servant for terrorist organizations,” the television news website Medyascope reported. The court suspended Pişkin’s sentence barring a repeated offense in…
Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of May 7, 2018
Journalists arrested On May 3, authorities in the southern city of Mersin transferred İsmail Çoban, former news editor for the shuttered Kurdish language daily Azadiya Welat, to the southeastern city of Diyarbakır, where he will remain in custody pending trial, according to reports.
Turkey convicts Cumhuriyet journalists on terrorism charges
Istanbul, April 25, 2018–An Istanbul court today convicted 14 people affiliated with the independent daily Cumhuriyet of aiding terrorist organizations and sentenced them to jail terms ranging between three and seven years, the newspaper reported. The court placed the journalists on probation and banned them from traveling until the appeals process has ended, according to…
Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of March 15, 2018
Supreme Court says Can Dündar should face retrial Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals on March 9 ruled that Can Dündar, former chief editor of the daily, Cumhuriyet, and Erdem Gül, the paper’s Ankara representative, should face a retrial on charges of “obtaining secret information with means of espionage,” Euronews reported.
Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of September 10, 2017
Court orders four Cumhuriyet managers and journalists to remain in custody for trial A Turkish court remanded four members of the Cumhuriyet newspaper yesterday who are on trial for terrorism-related charges, according to reports from their employer and Reuters.
Trial of 17 Cumhuriyet newspaper employees begins in Turkey
New York, July 24, 2017–The trial of 17 journalists, managers, and board members of the pro-opposition daily newspaper Cumhuriyet on terrorism-related charges is a further blow to press freedom in Turkey, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of June 18, 2017
Prosecutor asks to reopen investigation into journalist for interview Public prosecutor Umut Tepe petitioned a Turkish court to allow him to reopen his investigation into jailed Cumhuriyet reporter Ahmet Şık on charges of producing propaganda for a terrorist organization, Cumhuriyet reported yesterday. Tepe had previously dropped charges against the journalist for publishing an interview with…
Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of May 21, 2017
Two journalists arraigned, finance manager released A court in Istanbul arraigned Gökmen Ulu and Mediha Olgun, journalists for the secularist, nationalist daily Sözcü, one of the last remaining widely circulated newspapers to be consistently critical of the government, on charges of “committing a crime in the name of a [terrorist] organization without being a member,…
Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of May 7
Editor detained at courthouse Police in Istanbul’s Çağlayan Courthouse today detained Çağlar Özbilgin, an editor for the leftist news website sendika.org, his employer reported. Özbilgin was there to attend a hearing of his trial on charges of “insulting the president,” but police detained him for a separate criminal investigation into him on suspicion of “provoking…