The Executive Board of the International Press Institute (IPI) unanimously issued the following statement today in advance of the resumption of trial proceedings on Monday targeting 18 current and former journalists, executives and others from independent daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, including three IPI members.
Statement by the IPI Executive Board on the Cumhuriyet Trial in Turkey
Ahead of a resumption next week in Turkey of the criminal trial targeting individuals from the newspaper Cumhuriyet, the Executive Board of the International Press Institute (IPI) condemns the case as a gross abuse of authority and calls for the immediate release of our colleagues.
Charges that 18 current and former journalists, executives and staff of the country’s leading independent daily sought to seize control of the paper and slant its coverage to support terrorist groups and subvert democracy are preposterous.
Accusations that news reporting and commentary criticising or scrutinising government policy was intended to aid the movement led by U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, whom Turkey’s government blames for the July 2016 coup attempt and whom the paper has harshly and consistently criticised, are absurd. So, too, are allegations that the defendants simultaneously sought to assist outlawed militant Kurdish and leftist groups with a mutual antipathy to Gülenists.
Authorities’ bid to establish guilt by tenuous association – relying on innocuous and unavoidable contacts with individuals whose mobile phones held a secretive encryption application, including attempts at contact to which the accused did not even respond – and their conduct of investigations apparently intended to bolster charges decided in advance are disgraceful.
Prosecutors’ requests that those on trial be sentenced to lengthy prison terms, some up to 43 years, are similarly shameful. And the lengthy pre-trial detention to which many of the defendants have been subjected – in some cases still ongoing after nearly 14 months, under conditions that have included isolation and arbitrary restrictions on access to counsel or loved ones – is obscene.
Three IPI members are on trial: our fellow IPI Executive Board Member Kadri Gürsel, Cumhuriyet Editor-in-Chief Murat Sabuncu and investigative journalist Ahmet Şık. Both Sabuncu and Şık have been held since late 2016 on the ground that their release might allow them to tamper with “evidence”, i.e., publicly available news reports or commentary posted months or even years ago.
The drawn-out pre-trial detention of these respected journalists and dozens more represents punishment without conviction and demonstrates a significant departure from respect for human rights and the rule of law, two fundamental pillars without which actual democracy cannot exist.
It is clear that this case is intended to silence Cumhuriyet, one of the country’s few remaining opposition voices, and to send a message to others who might dare to publish news or criticism deemed unwelcome by the ruling political establishment. Such behaviour is both wholly unacceptable and completely antithetical to justice, good governance and human decency.
We urge Turkey’s government to free our colleagues and dismiss this case, to take similar steps in the dozens of other cases in which journalists face imprisonment for their work and to end its systematic repression of the fundamental human right to share and receive information.
Vienna, Dec. 23, 2017
