Turkish Journalists: Guilty Without Trial

by Burak Bekdil • July 22, 2015 at 4:00 am

The case is against Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Cetinkaya, columnists for Cumhuriyet daily.
In solidarity with the French magazine, Charlie Hebdo, they displayed the cartoons in their columns. They now face up to four years and six months in jail on charges of "inciting public hatred" and "insulting religious values."
If the Erdogan siblings join the group of plaintiffs, they will be joining a group with quite interesting ideas. "If the court does not punish them, let us punish them," one plaintiff said, clearly asking the judge to permit the group of plaintiffs to lynch the journalists. "We should not leave [their punishment] to afterlife," the angry plaintiff said in the courtroom. And another plaintiff asked the judge "to silence the Cumhuriyet daily."
The civilized world should support Cumhuriyet and its journalists, who have been found guilty by the Erdogan family -- without trial.

Ceyda Karan (left) and Hikmet Cetinkaya, columnists for Turkey's Cumhuriyet daily, are on trial for reprinting cartoons from Charlie Hebdo.

Two of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's children are better known by the public than the other two. His 34-year-old son, Bilal, made his debut at the Turkish hall of fame when recordings of phone-tapped conversations he had with [then prime minister] Erdogan were leaked on the internet.

The recordings appeared to capture the prime minister passionately instructing his son to dispose of large amounts of hidden funds from their private home in the midst of a corruption investigation. Although Erdogan later admitted that his private phones had been tapped, he rejected the telephone conversation with Bilal as "complete lies," fabricated by an Islamist group that wanted to discredit his government and take over state institutions in Turkey.

For the curious reader, here are a few lines from that telephone conversation:

Erdogan: "OK, so what I am saying is, get all that stuff in your house out. OK?"