NEW YORK\u2014The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the jail sentence handed to a journalist in Turkey and called on authorities to overturn the ruling on appeal, in a statement issued on March 13.<\/p>\n
CPJ condemned the jail sentence handed to a journalist in Turkey and called on authorities to overturn the ruling on appeal.<\/p>\n
A regional court in eastern Van province sentenced Murat Aydin, a reporter for the pro-Kurdish Dicle News Agency, or D\u0130HA, to six years and three months in jail on charges of alleged membership in the banned Kurdistan Worker\u2019s Party, or PKK, local press reported. Aydin denied the accusations and said he was being prosecuted in connection with his work. His lawyer, Halil Kartal, told CPJ that he would be appealing the verdict and that Aydin would not be jailed until the Supreme Court of Appeals had reviewed the case.<\/p>\n
Kartal told CPJ that prosecutors cited Ayd\u0131n\u2019s professional activities as evidence, including the journalist\u2019s phone conversations with D\u0130HA and other news outlets. In one, Kartal said, the reporter had relayed a statement from the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, which holds 36 seats in Turkey\u2019s parliament, to the pro-PKK satellite station Roj TV.<\/p>\n
\u201cTurkey has the opportunity at this very important political juncture to do right by all its journalists,\u201d CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney said. \u201cThe appeals court should overturn the politicized verdict against Murat Ayd\u0131n. Reporting on Kurdish affairs is not a crime. We urge Turkish authorities to uphold the democratic values they espouse by releasing all jailed journalists and allowing the media to perform their vital role of informing the public without fear of reprisal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ayd\u0131n was arrested in October 2011 and held in Bayburt M Type Prison until he was released in September 2012 after his first court hearing. Kartal told CPJ that Ayd\u0131n was abused by police during his arrest and detention. Ayd\u0131n said that authorities had focused exclusively on his journalism during the interrogations, according to an open letter he wrote that was published by the independent news portal Bianet while he was in jail.<\/p>\n
Turkey is the world\u2019s worst jailer of journalists, according to CPJ research. At least 49 journalists were behind bars when CPJ conducted its worldwide prison census on Dec. 1, 2012.<\/p>\n
via Pro-Kurdish Reporter Sentenced to Jail in Turkey | Armenian Weekly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW YORK\u2014The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the jail sentence handed to a journalist in Turkey and called on authorities to overturn the ruling on appeal, in a statement issued on March 13. CPJ condemned the jail sentence handed to a journalist in Turkey and called on authorities to overturn the ruling on appeal. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":49075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[7661],"class_list":["post-67784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-cpj"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}