On 2 September, an Istanbul court will open proceedings against two P24 members on charges that carry a 50 year sentence each. P24 regards these cases against founding member Yasemin Çongar and alternate board member Ahmet Altan, dating from 2010 and their time as editors of Taraf newspaper, to be a reckless abuse of judicial process.
Every democratic nation recognises that press freedom is an essential tool of good government. For a public prosecutor to demand such harsh sentence for any crime, let alone for a newspaper in the pursuit of its duties, implies an act so dastardly as to be almost beyond comprehension. Yet even a cursory glance at the indictment reveals the case against Ms Çongar, Mr Altan and their co-defendants to be not so much insubstantial as absurd.
Indeed, 46 pages of the indictment have lifted word for word directly from an indictment written for an entirely different purpose. So casual has the public prosecutor been in the execution of his responsibilities that in places the indictment has the name of the defendant (Can Dündar) from this completely different trial.
This is an example of “cut and paste justice” and is an embarrassment to the reputation of the Turkish legal system.
We continue to register deep concern for Mehmet Baransu a former Taraf journalist who languished in prison for 15 months before even knowing the charges against him . And we regret that another former Taraf journalist, Yıldıray Oğur and a fifth journalist, Tuncay Opçin, have also been charged.
We provide a link to an opinion from legal council, which tries to make sense of an indictment that does not so much lack clarity as indulge in obfuscation.
The gist of that statement is as follows:
Taraf published in 2010 detailed evidence of coup attempt – the so-called Balyoz papers. At first glance this might appear to be at the heart of the indictment since Balyoz is referred to in detail. Yet a cursory reading of the indictment reveals that the prosecutor does not regard Taraf’s decision to publish the Balyoz papers as criminal. (Indeed it is hard to see how warning of an impending act of gross criminality could be a prosecutable offence: Balyoz was not a state secret but a secret plan to tear down the state). Latterly, the courts have ruled that some of the evidence presented in Balyoz may have been inadmissible and that the suspects may not have had a fair trial. However, the indictment never suggests that Taraf published these documents in bad faith nor that the newspaper participated in a complex conspiracy. Balyoz does not figure in the charges at all.
At the end of the day (and after 276 pages), the only charge against Ms Congar, Mr Altan and her colleagues is that they wilfully exposed, acquired, damaged, and destroyed secret documents – namely something called the “Egemen Operation” plan. Yet Taraf newspaper never published such a plan, as a prior judgment of the Turkish Constitutional Court affirms.
In short, the only accusations concern documents of which Ms Çongar and Mr Altan had no knowledge of whatsoever.
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Platform for Independent Journalism (P24), a SEENPM member, is a timely initiative to support and promote editorial independence in the Turkish press at the time when the journalistic profession is under fierce commercial and political pressure.
P24 is a not-for-profit, civil society organization which has as its founders several experienced members of the Turkish press. It was established with a broad mission to build the capacity of the Turkish media, create a public appetite for media independence, define and promote best journalistic practice, and more specifically to encourage the transition to web-based journalism.