Two Turkish Journalists Jailed For Revealing State Secrets
MEP: A court in Turkey has sentenced two opposition journalists, Can Dundar and Erdem Gul from Turkey’s Cumhuriyet newspaper to a total of about 11 years in jail on charges of revealing state secrets just hours after one of them escaped attack outside the courthouse.
“In the space of two hours we have experienced two assassination attempts: one was done with a gun, the other was judicial,” said the newspaper editor, speaking in front of the court after the verdict was announced.
“The [jail sentences] we received are not just to silence us. The bullet was not just to silence us. This was done to all of us, to scare us into silence, to make us stop talking.
Shortly before the verdict, a gunman attempted to kill Mr Dundar.
The assailant fired several shots while Mr Dundar was briefing reporters outside the courthouse. Mr Dundar escaped unharmed and the gunman was arrested. A reporter was lightly injured in the leg.
The case, in which President Tayyip Erdogan was named as a complainant, has brought widespread condemnation from global rights groups and increased fears about freedom of the press in Turkey, a NATO member and EU candidate country.
The two men were acquitted of “espionage” and “coup attempt” but were found guilty of revealing state secrets in a story on Ankara’s role in arming Takfiri terrorists operating in Syria.
The pair, however, will not immediately be placed in detention as the court of appeal has yet to rule on the case.
Dundar and Gul were arrested in November of 2014 after publishing photos, videos, and a story earlier that year that they claimed showed officials from Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency (MIT) transporting arms to Syria in trucks, allegedly to opposition fighters.
