Jailed Zaman editor says we are journalists, not terrorists

The logo of Turkish daily newspaper Zaman is seen on the headquarters building as people demonstrate in support of the newspaper in Istanbul on March 4, 2016. An Istanbul court on Friday ordered into administration the Turkish daily newspaper Zaman that is sharply critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, amid growing alarm over freedom of expression in the country.
The logo of Turkish daily newspaper Zaman is seen on the headquarters building as people demonstrate in support of the newspaper in Istanbul on March 4, 2016. An Istanbul court on Friday ordered into administration the Turkish daily newspaper Zaman that is sharply critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, amid growing alarm over freedom of expression in the country.


Date posted: September 20, 2017

Former Zaman daily Ankara Representative Mustafa Ünal, who is standing trial after 414 days in pretrial detention, said on Monday that he and other colleagues in the same case are journalists, not terrorists.

Speaking during the hearing at the İstanbul 13th High Criminal Court in the Silivri Prison compound on Monday, Ünal underlined that he was a journalist who was trying to survive by expressing his views in Zaman before it was shut down by the government. He also said he knows many members of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) personally.

“I want to ask them [AKP members]: Are we terrorists?”

Underlining that he is standing trial for writing against the government, Ünal said he has never been afraid of being tried for the things he has written. “However, the indictment will go down in the history of the judiciary and the media for not having even the suspicion of a crime having been committed, let alone evidence of one,” he added.

Also testifying during the hearing on Monday, former Zaman night editor İbrahim Karayeğen said his name is among the suspects in the case; however, he doesn’t even know what charges he is facing despite having been held in pretrial detention for 414 days.

Underlining that he wants all putshchists who attempted a coup on July 15 of last year to be punished with the most severe of penalties, Karayeğen said he had been working at Zaman for 12 years and continued to work as a night shift editor with the new administration after the daily was seized in March 2016.

“Someone may ask why I continued to work at Zaman and why I didn’t leave it [after the government started to target it]. That is a cruel question. How could I find a place to work as a journalist when thousands of other colleagues were unemployed,” he said.

Denying that he used the infamous ByLock smart phone application, Karayeğen said he has never downloaded the app, believed by Turkish authorities to have been used as a communication tool among followers of the Gülen movement, which accused by the government of being behind the failed coup.

He also said he was detained after the abortive coup as he was trying to travel abroad, which is his legal right.

Karayeğen’s daughter Zeliha Esra Karayeğen was also arrested by a court on Aug. 10 for having an account in the government-shuttered Bank Asya and for downloading the ByLock application.

Along with Ünal and Karayeğen, a total of 30 former Zaman journalists, 21 of whom are in jail, are facing “terrorism” and “coup-plotting” charges due to having worked and written for the Zaman daily, which was linked to the Gülen movement.

Former Zaman employees Mümtaz’er Türköne, Şahin Alpay, Ali Bulaç, Ahmet Metin Sekizkardeş, Ahmet Turan Alkan, Alaattin Güner, Cuma Kaya, Faruk Akkan, Hakan Taşdelen, Hüseyin Belli, Hüseyin Turan, İbrahim Karayeğen, İsmail Küçük, Mehmet Özdemir, Murat Avcıoğlu, Mustafa Ünal, Onur Kutlu, Sedat Yetişkin, Şeref Yılmaz, Yüksel Durgut and Zafer Özsoy have been in pretrial detention for 14 months as the judges repeatedly rejected challenges to their detention despite the fact that there was no reason to keep them in jail pending trial.

Ahmet İrem, Ali Hüseyinçelebi, Süleyman Sargın, Osman Nuri Arslan, Osman Nuri Öztürk, Lalezer Sarıibrahimoğlu, Nuriye Ural and Orhan Kemal Cengiz are also named as suspects in the indictment, but they are being tried without detention. Professor İhsan Duran Dağı, who used to work as a columnist for Zaman, is cited as a fugitive in the indictment.

 

Source: Turkish Minute , September 18, 2017


Related News

What Erdogan and Khomeini Have in Common

The Turkish secular elite who have long feared an Iranian-style theocracy in their own country may finally be seeing the worst of their fears come true. The widespread purges under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan following last month’s failed coup attempt against his government suggest the Turkish state is moving toward authoritarian Islamist rule of the sort that Iran introduced in 1979.

Over 30 Turkish diplomats, families seek asylum in Germany

Nearly three dozen Turkish diplomats and family members have claimed asylum in Germany over alleged affiliation to the network of US-based opposition leader Fethullah Gulen, whom the government in Ankara claims to have masterminded the failed July 15 coup attempt.

‘Hizmet is the attempt to celebrate all of humanity’

Hizmet Movement is unique because it doesn’t try to carry out what we call cultural and religious particularism. That would be the idea that your group is the best, that you have the only form of truth, that all other groups are impure, incorrect and that they are not worthy of time, or that they’re not worthy of learning something from them. Hizmet, in fact, says the opposite. Members reach out to learn from other peoples, they actively invite people from different cultural backgrounds, people from different religious backgrounds to come and teach them, to teach them things.

Pakistani rights group calls for immediate release of abducted Turkish principal, family

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has called for the immediate release of Mesut Kaçmaz, the former principal of a Turkish school in Pakistan, and his family, who were reportedly abducted by Pakistani police in Lahore in the early hours of Wednesday.

British lawyers warn of human rights violations in Turkey [against Gulen Movement]

Turkey’s government is inflicting “systematic human rights violations” on its judiciary, police and media, according to a scathing report by senior British lawyers that was commissioned by one of president Erdogan’s exiled opponents.

Relatives Fear Turkish Govt May Kill Prisoners Through Staged Riot

Prisoners jailed in the post-coup crackdown in Istanbul and Ankara these days have far serious problem than torture and ill-treatment: media reports about a mass prison break that could provoke a government intervention, claims about mass executions of the prisoners trying to escape in that attempt.

Latest News

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

University refuses admission to woman jailed over Gülen links

In Case You Missed It

Turkey asks imams abroad to profile Gülen-linked expatriates

Gülen’s lawyer to sue daily Sabah over black propaganda

Gülen Schools and Rule-of-Law in Turkey

Ethiopian Minister of Foreign Affairs holds talks with TUSKON delegation

Opposition CHP to take Gül-approved dershane law to Constitutional Court

Turkish government defiant as battle over prep schools rises

Greek Orthodox Bishop Demetrios Honored

Copyright 2023 Hizmet News