Espionage, Treason, Terror: Turkey Begins Trying Its Oldest Newspaper On Press Freedom Day

I hear the voices of protesters and police sirens as I write this piece at my house in Istanbul`s Sisli district, where Turkey`s oldest newspaper Cumhuriyet`s headquarter is located.

This is the way to celebrate journalism and 'press freedom day' in Turkey, blaming the country's oldest newspaper's 17 employees; reporters, editors, columnists (and even a cartoonist) with treason, terror and espionage. 

The journalists will appear before the court for the first time today after 267 days of their arrests. The suspects are accused of "aiding the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Fethullahist Terror Organization" for “publishing the footage and photographs of Turkish intelligence trucks carrying weapons to Syria in 2014”.

The former editor in chief of the daily who was in charge at the time of publishing that story, Can Dündar, lives in exile in Germany. Speaking to German Junge Welt he said: “Turkey holds hostage many people including his wife.”

He started a new bilingual (Turkish and German) site and it was immediately banned in Turkey. 

Dündar categorically denies his alleged links with the Gülen movement that tried to stage a coup on July 15, 2016 and failed. However, Dündar writes: "President Erdoğan's police-coup followed the military takeover attempt."

In September 2016, Cumhuriyet was given the "Alternative Nobel Prize", or Right Livelihood Award. The daily was chosen "for their fearless investigative journalism and commitment to freedom of expression in the face of oppression, censorship, imprisonment and death threats", the foundation said.

July 24 is the day of the abolishment of press censorship in Turkey in 1908 after the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II was toppled. His rule has been named the “period of autocracy” in the history books. 

It is a bit ironic to choose this day to start trials. Isn't it?