Court wants up to 11 years for Samanyolu TV director


Date posted: June 6, 2014

 
ISTANBUL
A prosecutor has filed charges against a director of Samanyolu TV accusing him of “insulting” and “slandering” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and fomenting “grudges and hostility among the public,” demanding up to 11 years and two months in prison.

Chief Public Prosecutor Sıddık İlgar demands between two years and 10 months to 11 years and two months in prison for Abdullah Bağ, who is the director responsible for the content of the broadcasts of Samanyolu TV, which has currently been under attack from government agencies.

Samanyolu TV and Samanyolu News have jointly been fined TL 1,322,492 in total for 55 administrative fines issued by the Supreme Board of Radio and Television (RTÜK). Prime Minister Erdoğan, whose government faces graft charges, has said an investigation into his inner circle over alleged graft is a plot against his government, claiming that the Hizmet movement — a social movement that has also inspired Samanyolu TV — is behind the plot, although he has failed to produce any evidence in this regard.

Prosecutor İlgar recently completed an investigation following a petition filed by Prime Minister Erdoğan as plaintiff. In the indictment, which has been accepted by the 9th Criminal Court of First Instance, it is alleged that Samanyolu TV distorted an election campaign speech delivered by Erdoğan on March 4.

The indictment also claims that “an illegal structure nested within the state,” as prime minister Erdoğan has suggested, is trying to overthrow the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government. The indictment claims that on March 4, Erdoğan, speaking at an election rally, called on his supporters to curtly turn them down if Hizmet movement members visit their homes speaking against the AK Party.
The indictment claimed that Samanyolu TV’s broadcast had spliced Erdoğan’s speech to make it appear as if the prime minister hates anyone who is a member of the Hizmet movement, although the prime minister has made it clear that he differentiates between the grassroots of the movement and those at the top. According to the prosecutor, the news clip was a distortion of Erdoğan’s speech and has slandered Erdoğan and defamed his “honor and reputation.”

The Turkish press has been categorized as “not free” by the international group Freedom House. On Wednesday, Dunja Mijatovic, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) representative on freedom of the media, said freedom of expression is severely limited in Turkey while media freedom has become critically stifled.

She told Today’s Zaman: “What I find alarming is that the latest developments in Turkey point toward more restrictions instead of a gradual progress toward increased media freedom.”

Recently Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu threatened Zaman diplomacy correspondent Servet Yanatma, who asked the foreign minister if it was normal for a prime minister to appoint newspaper editors, edit news reports or threaten a media owner, describing his question as an “insult to the prime minister” and stating that Turkey has press freedom “if you can safely go home after this press conference.”

Recordings of wiretapped conversations between Prime Minister Erdoğan and some media bosses, leaked in March online, resulting in a ban on Twitter and YouTube, have suggested that many journalists in the mainstream media who have been fired were sacked under orders from Erdoğan over columns or stories that go against the government’s ideas.

Source: Todays Zaman , June 5, 2014


Related News

Fethullah Gulen: No Return from Democracy!

Fethullah Gulen speaks at the commencement reception of Journalists and Writers Foundation in 1994: As with the entire world, people in Turkey are also heading towards democracy. To date, majority of the people in Turkey have lived only with the ten percent of democracy; they were able to get only one tenth of it, and […]

Political raids targeting educational institutions a ‘hate crime’

Samanyolu Education Foundation’s Lawyer Selamet Şen has stated that the measures constitute to nothing more than a hate crime and discrimination, underlining that the institutions are both open for inspections which they have passed with flying colors.

Targeted by dictator, Turkish family seeks refuge in Albany

Three generations of a Turkish family were stripped of their livelihoods, life savings, friends and culture in a sweeping purge by the authoritarian regime of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. They languish as political refugees in a cramped apartment along a busy commercial stretch of Delaware Avenue.

Prove it [that Hizmet linked to graft operation]

There are some people who fail to look at the charges that have been leveled against the detainees in the corruption operation that has touched the sons of three ministers and instead they just speculate about the timing and forces that prompted the operation.

Turkey: Detained higher education professionals at risk of torture

Scholars at Risk (SAR) is gravely concerned about sweeping actions against Turkey’s higher education sector, including most recently prolonged incommunicado detention and related risks of torture and ill-treatment of hundreds of higher education professionals, in violation of Turkey’s obligations under domestic and international law.

Extraditing Gülen: A smart move for the PM?

In the latest salvo in his battle for his political life, the Turkish prime minister has started to threaten to bring U.S.-based scholar Fetullah Gülen back to Turkey to face a possible criminal case for his alleged role in what the premier called a “civilian coup plot” attempt. In legal terms, there has been no legal investigation or arrest warrant for Gülen.

Latest News

Fethullah Gulen – man of education, peace and dialogue – passes away

Fethullah Gülen’s Condolence Message for South African Human Rights Defender Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Hizmet Movement Declares Core Values with Unified Voice

Ankara systematically tortures supporters of Gülen movement, Kurds, Turkey Tribunal rapporteurs say

Erdogan possessed by Pharaoh, Herod, Hitler spirits?

Devious Use of International Organizations to Persecute Dissidents Abroad: The Erdogan Case

A “Controlled Coup”: Erdogan’s Contribution to the Autocrats’ Playbook

Why is Turkey’s Erdogan persecuting the Gulen movement?

Purge-victim man sent back to prison over Gulen links despite stage 4 cancer diagnosis

In Case You Missed It

Turkey’s harsh new reality: the gateway to Jihad Central

Australian Relief Organisation Orphanage Refurbishment Project in Malawi

A new book by Esposito and Yavuz on ‘The Gülen Movement’

GYV praised for response to accusations about Hizmet movement

TUSKON warns against probing policemen under ‘shadow of politics’

‘My 5-month old son is slowly going blind in prison,’ says jailed mother

Handcuffed justice

Copyright 2025 Hizmet News