Veteran Turkish journalist Lale Kemal: I was put in prison without a single piece of evidence

Stockholm Center for Freedom ^ | June 7, 2018 | SCF

[Texas Fossil]

Veteran journalist Lale Kemal, a columnist for the Zaman newspaper, at one time Turkey’s most highly circulated newspaper before the Turkish government’s unlawful takeover and closure of it in 2016, said at her last court hearing on Thursday, “I was put in prison without a single piece of evidence.”

Kemal was arrested with former Zaman columnists Ali Bulaç, Ahmet Turan Alkan, Nuriye Akman, Mustafa Ünal and Şahin Alpay on July 30, 2017 after a controversial military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 and released pending trial under judicial probation after months of pretrial detention. The journalist presented her last defence before the İstanbul 13th High Criminal Court on Thursday afternoon as part of a trial of 31 defendants from Zaman.

According tweets from @P24DavaTakip, journalist Lale Kemal said in her defence: “The prosecutor’s office ignored the fact that my articles, which are accused of being a crime, belonged to an era when the Gülen movement was not described as a [terrorist] organization. This is not a minor issue. On the contrary, this is an extremely important point. The evidence has not been checked, and so they have charged me with committing a criminal offense without any evidence to back it up.”

[Texas Fossil]

Turkey is the biggest jailer of journalists in the world. The most recent figures documented by SCF show that 242 journalists and media workers were in jail as of June 3, 2018, most in pretrial detention. Of those in prison 182 were under arrest pending trial while only 60 journalists have been convicted and are serving their time. Detention warrants are outstanding for 142 journalists who are living in exile or remain at large in Turkey.

And the arrests do not just extend to Journalists, there was an arrest warrant list with 10's of thousands of names on it for Social Media posts. I know non-Turk people who's names are on that list.

[FreedomPoster]

I saw an eye-opening talk last year from a Turkish newspaper editor now living here in exile. Abdülhamit Bilici would be jailed at best if he were still in Turkey.

Country has gone from being a quasi-Democracy (his words) to a complete autocracy in the last several years. He was editor of the largest Turkish newspaper, Zaman, circulation ~1,000,000, until it was taken over by the government a couple years ago now, and ultimately shut down.

The video he had of the takeover of Zaman was quite sobering. This is what totalitarianism looks like.

http://youtu.be/9fN9bqOlaKM?rel=0

Yay, Erdogan. It’s time to kick Turkey out of NATO.

Story on the newspaper’s takeover from a 2 years ago.

http://www.itv.com/news/story/2016-03-05/turkish-newspaper-seized-by-government/

[bgill]

For the umpteenth time, why are we friends with Turkey?

[Texas Fossil]

Thank you. It is clear that all “reporting” done in Turkey is nothing more than State Propaganda.

And note that Erdogan had endorsed dictator Modura in Venezuela before he stole his re-election in May. Birds of a Feather?