16 Jun 17 | Campaigns -- Featured, Press Releases
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Journalist Ahmet Altan is charged with inserting subliminal messages in support of the failed 15 July coup in Turkey.
On 19 June, the first hearing will take place in a trial concerning 17 defendants, including a number of journalists. Among the defendants are prominent novelists and political commentators, Ahmet Altan, Mehmet Altan and Nazlı Ilıcak. The case is the first trial of journalists accused of taking part in last year’s failed coup
The case is the first trial of journalists accused of taking part in last year’s failed coup attempt and may shed light on how the courts will approach numerous cases concerning the right to freedom of expression and the right to a fair trial under the state of emergency.
Representatives of Article 19, Amnesty International, Index on Censorship, Norwegian PEN and PEN International will be attending the hearing in order to demonstrate solidarity with the defendants, and with media freedom more broadly in Turkey. The Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales and the International Senior Lawyers Project are also sending observers to the hearing.
The charges against the accused are detailed in a 247-page long indictment which identifies President Erdogan and the Turkish government as the victims. Defendants Ahmet Altan, Mehmet Altan and Nazlı Ilıcak are charged with “attempting to overthrow the Turkish Grand National Assembly”, “attempting to overthrow the Government of Turkey”, “attempting to abolish the Constitutional order” and “Committing crimes on behalf of an armed terrorist organisation without being a member”. The remaining defendants are additionally charged with “membership of a terrorist organisation”, in reference to the Gülen movement who the Turkish government accuses of having orchestrated the coup attempt.
The majority of those on trial are either currently in exile or have been held in pre-trial detention for almost 10 months. On 14 June, the European Court of Human Rights wrote to the Turkish government requesting its response to a number of questions to determine whether the human rights of seven detained journalists, including the Altans and Nazlı Ilıcak, have been violated due to the long pre-trial detention.
We believe the trial to be politically motivated and call on the authorities to drop all charges against the accused unless they can provide concrete evidence of commission of internationally recognisable criminal offences and to immediately and unconditionally release those held in pre-trial detention.
Article 19 has prepared an expert opinion examining the charges against the Altan brothers, at the request of their defence lawyers, which will be submitted to the court on Monday morning. The opinion argues that the charges levelled against the Altans amount to unlawful restrictions on the exercise of the right to freedom of expression.
For more detailed information regarding the context for free expression in Turkey, please see a joint statement submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in May 2017.
For further information please contact:
Sarah Clarke, International Policy and Advocacy Manager, PEN International, sarah.clarke@pen-international.org
Georgia Nash,Programme Officer – Middle East & North Africa / Europe & Central Asia, ARTICLE 19, [email protected]
Melody Patry, Head of Advocacy, Index on Censorship, [email protected]
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20 Sep 16 | Events, mobile
Join Index on Censorship and English PEN for a vigil outside the Turkish embassy in support of Ayşe Çelik and others currently persecuted for speaking out in Turkey. This vigil is part of a global campaign launched by the Initiative for Freedom of Expression – Turkey.
Çelik, a teacher, will stand trial beginning on Friday, accused of “promoting terrorist organisation propaganda” after she called in to a popular television entertainment show to plead for more media coverage of abuse and killings of civilians in Diyarbakir, south-east Turkey.
Thirty-one people who co-signed Çelik’s statement will also be tried alongside her. They all face more than seven years in prison if found guilty.
Index on Censorship stands with Ayşe Çelik and will not ignore this breach of her basic right to freedom of expression. We denounce the current crackdown undertaken by authorities in Turkey and call for the immediate and unconditional release of imprisoned writers Ahmet Altan, Mehmet Altan, Asli Erdogan and Necmiye Alpay.
We will be outside the Turkish embassy from 2pm to 3pm.
Here is the full statement that landed Çelik in court:
Are you aware of what’s going on in Southeast Turkey? Unborn children, mothers, people are being killed here. As a performer, as a human being you should not remain silent to what’s happening. You should say stop. I want to say one more thing. There are miserable people who are glad to hear that children are dying. We, more correctly I, cannot say anything to these people, but shame on you. I’m sorry I want to say one more thing. I’m a teacher and I’m asking all teachers (who fled the area): How will they ever go back to these places? How will they look at those innocent children’s faces and into their eyes? I can’t speak really. The things happening here are reflected so differently on TV screens or on the media. Don’t remain silent. As a human being, have a sensitive approach. See, hear and lend a hand to us. It’s a pity, don’t let those people, those children die; don’t let the mothers cry anymore. I can’t even speak over the sounds of the bombs and bullets. People are struggling with starvation and thirst, babies and children too. Don’t remain silent.
When: Friday 23 September 2pm
Where: 43 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8PA (Map)
14 Sep 16 | News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
Turkey Uncensored is an Index on Censorship project to publish a series of articles from censored Turkish writers, artists and translators.
Jailed Turkish journalist Ahmet Altan.
If made out of the right stuff a journalist is a tough nut. Some of us are, you may say, born that way. Our profession lives in our cells. We are compelled to do what our DNA instructs us to do.
Yet, these days, I can’t help waking up each morning in a state of gloom.
Never before have we, Turkey’s journalists, been subjected to such multi-frontal cruelty. Each and every one of us have at least one — usually more — serious issue to wrestle with. Many have already faced unemployment. According to Turkey’s journalist unions, more than 2,300 media professionals have been forced to down pens since the coup attempt. The silenced face a dark destiny: they will never be rehired by a media under the Erdogan yoke.
More than 120 of my colleagues are in indefinite detention – and that number does not include 19 already sentenced to prison. The latest to be added to the list are the novelist and former editor of daily Taraf, the renowned journalist Ahmet Altan and his brother, Mehmet Altan, a commentator and scholar.
The grim pattern of arrests comes with a note attached: “To be continued…”
Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk recently and eloquently summed up what Turkey is becoming: “Everybody, who even just a little, criticises the government is now being locked in jail with a pretext, accompanied by feelings of grudge and intimidation, rather than applying law. There is no more freedom of opinion in Turkey!”
Some of those who are still free, either at home or abroad, may consider themselves lucky – or at least be perceived as such. But the reality is that each and every one of us faces immense hardship.
Being forced into an exile, as I have been, is not an easy existence. Many like me have an arrest warrant hanging over their heads. Others are simply anxious or unwilling to return home.
Pressured by financial strains, a journalist in exile bears the burden of the country they have been torn from while remaining glued to the agony of others.
But there is more. Last week I offered one of my news analyses to a tiny, independent daily — one of the very few remaining in Turkey. Waiving any fee, I asked the editor — who is a tough nut — to consider publishing it. Soon, the text was filed and the initial response was: “This one is great, we will run it.”
Then came a telephone call. Because the editor and I have a friendly relationship, he was open when he told me this: “As we were about to go online with it, one editor suggested we ask our lawyer. I thought he was right in feeling uneasy because everything these days is extraordinary. Then, the lawyer strongly advised against it. Why, we asked. He said that since Mr Baydar has an arrest warrant, publishing a text with his byline or signature would, according to the decrees issued under emergency rule, give the authorities to the right to raid the newspaper, or simply to shut it down. Just like that. Tell Mr Baydar this, I am sure he will understand.”
I did understand. No sane person would want to bear the responsibility for causing the newspaper’s employees to be rendered jobless, to be sent out to starvation.
I have since published piece elsewhere.
This incident is but one in a chain, hidden in Turkey’s relative freedom. It’s a cunning and brutal system of censorship that aims to sever the ties between Turkey’s cursed journalists and their readership. It is a deliberate construction of a wall between us and the public. It is putting us in a cage even if we are breathing freedom elsewhere.
It’s enough to make George Orwell turn in his grave.
But there is some consolation. Thankfully we, the censored among Turkey’s journalists, have space to write about the truth, make comments and offer analysis in spaces like Index on Censorship. Thankfully, we have the internet, which is everybody’s open property, even if the sense of defeat when you awake some mornings leaves you convulsing in the gloom.
You know you have to chase it away and get on with what you know best: to inform, to exchange views, offer independent opinion, promote diversity, and hope that one day it will contribute to democracy.
More Turkey Uncensored
Can Dündar: “We have your wife. Come back or she’s gone”
Turkey: Losing the rule of law
Yavuz Baydar: As academic freedom recedes, intellectuals begin an exodus from Turkey
01 Sep 16 | Campaigns, Campaigns -- Featured, Statements, Turkey, Turkey Statements
(Photos: Pen International)
On 2 September, the first hearing will take place in a trial concerning three former senior editors of Taraf daily newspaper, Ahmet Altan, Yasemin Çongar and Yıldıray Oğur; and two journalists, Mehmet Baransu and Tuncay Opçin. The undersigned organisations believe the trial to be politically motivated and call on the government to drop all charges against the accused and to immediately and unconditionally release Mehmet Baransu, who has been held in pre-trial detention since his arrest on 2 March 2015.
The charges pre-date the 15 July coup attempt, which the undersigned organisations also condemned; however, this is a high profile trial of journalists following the declaration of the State of Emergency in Turkey, under which at least 100 journalists have been detained. This trial is therefore of particular significance, as it may shed light on how the courts will approach cases concerning the right to freedom of expression and the right to a fair trial under the state of emergency – even when not directly related to the coup attempt.
ARTICLE 19, Index on Censorship, EFJ, Norwegian Press Association, Norwegian Journalists’ Union, PEN Germany, Danish PEN, PEN International, and Wales PEN Cymru are attending the trial.
THE CHARGES
The charges are detailed in a 276 page indictment, which was accepted on 20 June 2016 by the Istanbul High Criminal Court, 16 months after the initiation of the investigation. All five journalists are facing charges of acquiring, destroying and divulging documents concerning the security of the state and its political interests, punishable by up to 50 years in prison. Baransu and Opçin are facing additional charges of ‘membership and administration of a terrorist organization’ and face a possible 75-year prison term.
The charges of acquiring, destroying and divulging state secrets against the five journalists concern the ‘Egemen Operation’ plan – an out-of-date military war plan to respond to a Greek invasion. As a prior judgment of the Turkish Constitutional Court affirms, Taraf did not publish state secrets regarding this operation. Moreover, it is hard to see how the document could be considered a state secret; the Egemen Operation Plan was declared no longer in use in 2007, prior to when it was allegedly acquired by the journalists. Of even greater concern,the plan was actually made public in 2011 by a Court, when it was published in an indictment related to another case.
The charges of membership and administration of a terrorist organisation against Baransu and Opcin, refer to alleged affiliation with the Gülenist Terror Organisation (Fetullahçı Terör Örgütü, FETÖ), the group that the Turkish government accuses of being behind the failed coup in July. The first official reference to this group as a terrorist movement was in an indictment in May 2015, and it was only added to the official list of outlawed terrorist organisations in Turkey in May 2016 – six years after the period to which the charges relate.
The defendants deny all the charges.
PROBLEMS WITH THE INDICTMENT
The indictment presented by the prosecutor is highly problematic, containing a number of procedural deficiencies. In addition, failing to establish the facts against the defendants, it includes information about several offences that bear no relation to the proceedings at issue; and levies accusations against the defendants that are not included in the charges. The deficiencies include:
• The indictment accuses the defendants of propaganda for a terrorist organisation; but brings no charges on these grounds, nor does it provide any facts to support this.
• 46 pages of the indictment have been copied directly from an entirely separate indictment against Cumhuriyet editors, Can Dündar and Erdem Gül, who exposed illegal arms transfers by the Turkish Intelligence Service (MIT) into Syria and were sentenced to prison for five years for their reporting. The degree of direct reproduction is evident from the fact that one paragraph of the indictment even starts with the words ‘The Defendant Can Dündar’.
• Large parts of the indictment against the journalists focus on a series of controversial news reports, titled the ‘Balyoz (Sledgehammer) Coup Plan’, published in Taraf between 20-29 January 2010, about an alleged military coup to overthrow the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government. However, the charges do not, in fact, relate to this story. Indeed, the indictment does not suggest Taraf’s decision to publish the Balyoz papers was criminal and Balyoz does not figure in the specific charges presented at all.
These deficiencies seriously undermine the credibility of the charges, increasing concerns that they are groundless and aimed at stifling opposition voices within Turkey.
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND THE RIGHT TO A FAIR TRIAL
It is well established that no restriction may be imposed on freedom of expression on the grounds of national security unless the government can demonstrate that the restriction is necessary in a democratic society to protect a legitimate national security interest. The burden of demonstrating the validity of the restriction rests with the government.
Moreover, any restriction on journalistic activity – in this case the charges brought against the journalists – must have the genuine purpose and demonstrable effect of protecting a legitimate national security interest. As noted, the alleged state secret, the Egemen Secret Operation Plan, had already been published prior to charges being brought by a court, undermining the assertion that charges of acquiring, destroying and divulging this plan are necessary to ensure state security. This is reinforced by the disproportionately high sentences sought against the defendants. Restrictions
must
meet
a
sort
of
proportionality
test,
whereby
the
benefit
in
terms
of
protecting
the
interest
must
be
greater
than
the
harm
caused
to
freedom
of
expression.
Additionally, national security concerns do not allow the government to waive the rule of law protections that are part of international law. This includes the right not to be arbitrarily detained and the right to be informed promptly of the charges against him or her. Mehmet Baransu, who has been held in pre-trial detention for 18 months, and had no charges served against him for a 15 month period, has had both of these rights violated.
We call upon the government of Turkey to drop the charges against the Taraf journalists. At a time when the Turkish government should be demonstrating its commitment to freedom of expression and the rule of law, it is pursuing highly questionable charges that seem to be aimed at stifling legitimate government criticism.
SIGNATORIES
ARTICLE 19
Index on Censorship
European Federation of Journalists
Norwegian Press Association
Norwegian Journalists’ Union
PEN Germany
My Media
PEN International
Welsh PEN Cymru
PEN UK
Related articles:
Turkey: Losing the rule of law
Ece Temelkuran: Turkey’s drive to make theatre “suitable”
Turkey’s continuing crackdown on the press must end
