Turkey’s Constitutional Court fails to uphold journalists’ rights

On the eve of World Press Freedom Day 2019, Turkey’s Constitutional Court took the staggering decision to rule, after over two years, that the arbitrary arrest and detention of four former journalists with the secular newspaper Cumhuriyet did not violate their rights to liberty and free expression.

After a session on May 2, the Court said it found that the rights of journalists of Murat Sabuncu, Ahmet Şık, Bülent Utku and former Cumhuriyet CEO Akın Atalay had not been violated, despite a lack of any credible evidence to support terrorism charges against them. However, the Court did find a rights violation in the cases of IPI Executive Board member and former Cumhuriyet columnist Kadri Gürsel and Yeni Şafak columnist Murat Aksoy, who was prosecuted in a separate case and sentenced to two years one month for “aiding and abetting a terrorist organization.”