A delegation from the International Press Institute (IPI), a global network of editors, publishers and leading journalists, will monitor the seventh and final hearing in the criminal trial against more than a dozen journalists and staff members of the independent Turkish daily newspaper Cumhuriyet on spurious terrorism-related charges.
IPI Turkey Advocacy Coordinator Caroline Stockford, who will lead the delegation, called the proceedings a “show trial”.
“Cumhuriyet and its journalists – who have already spent a collective amount of nine-and-a-half years in pre-trial detention – are being prosecuted for the ‘crime’ of critically reporting on the AKP regime”, Stockford said. “Prosecutors have produced no concrete evidence for the charges of links to terrorist organizations. Anything other than a complete acquittal and compensation for the defendants for the violation of their rights will be an outright injustice.”
IPI representatives will have attended six out of the seven hearings in the trial, which began in July 2017. Representatives will be available to comment on the proceedings this week in both English and Turkish. Verdicts in the case are expected on Friday, April 27.
See background and resources on the Cumhuriyet trial
Among the prominent defendants in the case are Cumhuriyet Editor-in-Chief Murat Sabuncu, investigative reporter Ahmet Şık and columnist Kadri Gürsel, all of whom are IPI members and who spent 16, 14 and 11 months in pre-trial detention, respectively. Gürsel is also a member of IPI’s global executive board.
Other defendants include cartoonist Musa Kart and book supplement editor Turhan Günay, who were jailed for nine months before being released last July. Akın Atalay, the chair of the Executive Committee of the Cumhuriyet Foundation, is the only defendant still in pre-trial detention.
The defendants are charged with lending support to multiple terror organizations of vastly different stripes: the Kurdish PKK, the extreme-left DHKP-C, and FETÖ, a government designation for the movement led by exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen, whom Turkey blames for the 2016 coup attempt. Prosecutors are seeking lengthy prison terms.
However, the indictment contains no actual evidence to support those charges, relying instead on news reports and social media posts, and on innocuous or unavoidable contacts – and even attempts at contact to which the accused did not respond – with individuals who had a secretive app on their phones said to have been used by Gülen’s followers.
Proceedings in the case have been plagued by egregious violations of the rule of law. Defendants have effectively been punished without conviction, having been held for months in pre-trial detention with arbitrary limits on outside contact and interference with their right to mount a legal defence.
With some 160 journalists behind bars, Turkey is the world’s leading jailer of journalists, the vast majority of whom were detained in a sweeping crackdown on dissent amid an ongoing state of emergency declared after the 2016 coup attempt.
Media Contacts
For more information about the Cumhuriyet trial or for comment on the proceedings this week, please contact:
Caroline Stockford
IPI Turkey Advocacy Coordinator/Lead trial monitoring delegate
Mobile and WhatsApp: +90 537 4192179
Email: cstockford[at]ipi[dot]media
Twitter: @globalfreemedia/@CarolineStockf1
Languages: English and Turkish
IPI Secretariat
+43 1 512 90 11
info[at]ipi[dot].media
