Turkey, 5 years and 10 months imprisonment to the editor of the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet – The Republic

ISTANBUL – You still alarm in Turkey for press freedom. An alarm that worries the European Union, and the premier Italian Renzi, as regards the agreement with the government in Ankara. The director of the turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet opposition, Can Dundar was sentenced to 5 years and 10 months in prison for violation of state secrets by publishing the scoop on the passage of weapons to Syria. The court did however drop the charges of attempted coup. In the same process, its managing editor Erdem Gul was sentenced to five years. The prosecutor had asked for 25 years for Dundar and 10 for Gul. According to reports from NTV, the court decided that it will remain on bail, pending appeal, but with a ban on leaving the process.

Dundar shortly before the sentence had escaped an assassination attempt in the gunfire before the Istanbul court. In the attack a reporter who was near Dundar was wounded in the leg while the man who shot was arrested. The bomber fired two shots shouting “traitor” to the journalist. “I’m fine. I know who is responsible, who has made me a target,” he tweeted Dundar.

The attacker was identified as Murat Sahin, 40-year old Sivas , in central Anatolia. The police are questioning to try to understand the motive of the attack and possible links to terrorist organizations. A block of the bomber director Cumhuriuyet, with the gun still in his hand, were the wife of the journalist, Dilek, and the lawyer and member of the opposition party CHP, Muharram Erkek. “We were coming out of the court to take the” Dundar said. “I was walking with my wife when a man approached and shouted ‘You’re a traitor’, and fired at me. I was not impressed. The bullet hit a colleague. Before my wife has embarked on man armed, then a deputy (who was present at the trial, ed ) grabbed me from behind. I do not know, but I know who has incited. “

Gul and Dundar have spent 92 days in prison, about half of them in solitary confinement, but then in February, the constitutional Court ruled that detention before trial was unfounded accusations arose because the activity journalistic, leading to their release. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said that did not comply with that judgment. Erdogan had accused the two of undermining Turkey’s international reputation and had promised that he would Dundar “paid a heavy price.” “what is happening in Turkey puts in a different light, it raises a question on the agreement” between the European Union and the government of Ankara, said the President of the Council, Matteo Renzi, speaking at the State of the Union, at Palazzo Vecchio. “The agreement with Turkey can not be the only solution.”

“The words of Dundar – note in a statement the Secretary-General and the President of the FNSI, Raffaele Lorusso and Giuseppe Giulietti – refer to the violent hate campaign unleashed by President Erdogan that made drag in court Can Dundar and his colleague Erdem Gul, accused of being accomplices of the terrorists simply because they have done their job of journalists. Some days ago we went to protest in front of the Turkish embassy, ​​now we ask the European institutions to put the issue of freedom of information in the middle of negotiations with Turkey. “

It is yet another episode restriction of freedom of expression of the opposition press, which took place the same day of the communication by the judicial administrators of turkish publishing group Feza you want to stop from 15 May publications Zaman , which was the most widespread national newspaper of opposition to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan prior to the police station with a police raid in the newsroom. The news was announced by CNN Turk. In addition to Zaman, already almost disappeared from newsstands, will be closed to other media of the group, including the news agency Cihan, the only able to cover the election results on a national basis in addition to the state Anadolu.

Officially, belie court Commissioners to have “a plan for closure” Zaman, claiming to have “worked for the publication and the growth of this newspaper and we will continue to do so “. The claim in a statement released after the controversy erupted for the news of the imminent closure of what Turkey was until March the most popular opposition newspaper to Erdogan. The fate of the newspaper, however, appears marked by the sales slump, came down in a few weeks far below the subsistence level.

In early March, police raided the editorial staff of Zaman to seat two commissioners extraordinary appointed by the judiciary. The accusation against the newspaper was to be part of a plot against the state warp by billionaire and imam Fethullah Gulen, a former ally of President Erdogan and for years his enemy number 1. Gulen, who lives in self-exile in the United States, is accused by Erdogan had infiltrated his followers in the institutions and in the media.

the first act of the two commissioners was the dismissal of the director and the editor in chief; the second was the imposition of a completely pro-government editorial line. The result, in just two months, it was the sinking of the newspaper. Sales Zaman experienced a steep fall: before the commissioner had an average daily circulation of over half a million copies, it now circulating just over 2000.

His abduction had raised the already strong alarm on press freedom in Turkey, especially since the collapse of sales and audience had led to the closure of TV, radio and newspapers of Ipek publishing group, which is also the police on the eve of the elections in November, again for alleged links to Gulen.