The editor of Turkey’s most influential dissident newspaper has said in an interview from his prison cell that the country’s ongoing crackdown on journalists is the worst in its history and that he was imprisoned for doing his job.

Can Dündar, the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet, also said the EU was betraying its democratic values by seeking a rapprochement with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in the hope that he would stem the flow of refugees into Europe while ignoring human rights violations.

“We always looked at the European Union as an anchor, a model to raise the standard of democracy in Turkey to universal levels, not as leverage to dictatorships,” he said. “Now, if the EU, in order to stop the influx of refugees by turning our lands into a big concentration camp, agrees to turn a blind eye while Erdoğan spurns democracy, human rights, freedom of press and rule of law, it means that the EU is discarding its founding principles in order to protect its short-term interests.”



Dündar was arrested in November along with his newspaper’s bureau chief in Ankara, Erdem Gül, and charged with espionage and divulging state secrets over a story published six months earlier which alleged that the Turkish intelligence service, MIT, was sending weapons to rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad in Syria under the guise of humanitarian aid.



His arrest came just days after the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), which Erdoğan founded and led before his election as president, secured a sweeping majority in parliamentary polls.

Turkey faces a growing threat from Islamic State, which has carried out a series of attacks in the country, and a simmering insurgency in Kurdish areas. It is also hosting more than 2 million Syrian refugees, tens of thousands of whom have attempted to flee to Europe by boat.

Fourteen journalists were in prison in Turkey in 2015, making it the fifth worst offender in the Committee to Protect Journalists’ media census. Erdoğan has also attacked foreign intellectuals and writers for criticising his government, saying they should stand with him against terrorism.

The interview with Dündar was arranged through his lawyers, who provided him with the questions. He wrote his answers by hand in his cell in solitary confinement and the Guardian was provided with translations of his responses and scans of the Turkish originals.

Dündar was kept in isolation for 40 days, before being moved to a shared cell. While in solitary, he was only allowed an hour a week to receive visitors. He is not allowed a typewriter or computer, and spends most of his day reading memoirs of those who wrote while incarcerated.

Dündar said he and his lawyers had not been provided with an indictment outlining the formal charges against him, and that there was a confidentiality order on the case which prevented his lawyers from examining it.

“What case? That is the real problem,” he said. “We have been in prison for 45 days, under conditions fit for a serial killer, yet we still don’t know our charges.”

He does know the contents of the complaint Erdoğan filed and the court statement justifying his imprisonment. The complaint calls for two life sentences for alleged espionage and “divulging state secrets”.

He said: “Delaying the bill of indictment is a tactic frequently used by the Turkish judicial system in order to punish the detainee in advance.”



Dündar said the facts of the case indicated that he had been imprisoned for doing his job as a journalist, and that prosecutors had only asked him about his phone number, why he wrote the story and who leaked the information to him.



“The sole ‘proof’ they have is my story printed in the newspaper,” he said. “So basically I am being charged with espionage because I printed a news story … in the newspaper.”



Dündar said the increasing number of prosecutions against journalists in Turkey was an attempt to intimidate the country’s press.

“There is always a positive correlation between the increase of criminal activity of the government and the number of imprisoned journalists,” he said. “So is the case this time. As the number of dirty affairs, corruption, unlawful arms trades and extrajudicial killings go up, the journalists who write or that have the potential to write about these deeds become targets. Their imprisonment is an intimidation to the other journalists. Throw one in [jail] and silence 100.”

The campaign and pressure against him came directly from Erdoğan, he claimed.

Turkish journalists hold a banner reading ‘Journalism is not a crime’ during a demonstration in support of Dündar and Gul in January in Ankara. Photograph: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images

“Two days after the news story about the trucks carrying weapons to radical Islamist groups came out, the president said: ‘He will pay a heavy price for this. I won’t let him go unpunished.’ On the same day, journalists who are close to the president went on air and took it to the next level and said: ‘If this happened in the United States, the CIA would kill the person who wrote it and make it look like an accident.’ Some see my imprisonment as a blessing, considering all the other possibilities.



“All day long the Turkish courts handle the lawsuits which he filed against journalists who ‘insulted’ him. He takes every criticism as a personal insult. There isn’t a single journalist in Turkey who exposes a scandal surrounding the government and expects ‘to get away with it’.”



Dündar also said Erdoğan had grown increasingly authoritarian, citing his crackdown on pro-Kurdish political parties, his backing for the AKP in recent parliamentary elections despite his presumed neutrality as a president, and attempts to co-opt police forces and the judiciary.

“He consolidated absolute power by establishing a police force of epic proportions and came in total control of the judiciary system,” Dündar said.

He also criticised the rapprochement between Erdoğan and the EU, which is hoping that the Turkish leader will act to stem the flow of refugees fleeing to Europe by sea. In November, the EU agreed a €3bn aid package for Syrian refugees with Turkey, widely seen as an attempt to push Ankara to crack down on the influx of refugees into Europe via the Mediterranean.

“If the west, in a bid to shut off its doors to the people escaping the fire that it has partially fuelled, turns a blind eye to a fascist government; it will drown, along with the refugees, its own values and principles and those who believe in them,” he said.

