Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief sentenced to prison over story says he has no faith in Turkey’s judiciary following coup attempt

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Can Dündar, the editor of one of Turkey’s leading opposition newspapers, has announced that he is stepping down, saying he no longer has faith in the judiciary to hear an appeal in a secrecy trial after the failed coup.

In May, a Turkish court sentenced Dündar, the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet, to five years and 10 months in prison for allegedly revealing state secrets in a story that infuriated the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The journalist was allowed to go free pending an appeal and is now believed to be in Germany.



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In a column for Cumhuriyet entitled “time to say farewell”, he said he would not surrender to the judiciary as the state of emergency imposed after the coup meant that he would not get a fair hearing.

Dündar said all the signs indicated that a period of “lawlessness” was under way and the state of emergency was being used by the government as a pretext to arbitrarily control the judiciary.

“To trust such a judiciary would be like putting one’s head under the guillotine,” he wrote.

“From now on, what we face would not be the court, but the government. No higher court would object to the lawlessness being carried out. Therefore, I’ve decided not to surrender to this judiciary at least until the state of emergency is lifted.”

Dündar, a prominent figure in Turkey and the author of several books and documentaries, was appointed as the Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief in February 2015 and swiftly made it Turkey’s most vocal opposition paper.

He said he would continue to write articles as a columnist.

Cumhuriyet’s report on a shipment of arms intercepted at the Syrian border in January 2014 led to a furore when it was published in May 2015, with Erdoğan warning Dundar that he would “pay a heavy price”.

Dündar, together with his Ankara bureau chief, Erdem Gül, spent three months in pre-trial detention before being freed in February under a constitutional court ruling.

Reporters Without Borders has described Turkey as a “world leader in imprisoned journalists” after what it called a witch-hunt launched in the aftermath of the failed coup.

Under the state of emergency, authorities have closed more than 100 media outlets critical of the government, placed 42 journalists in provisional detention and banned many others from travelling abroad, the organisation said.

On Monday the state-run news agency said police teams were conducting operations at three Istanbul courthouses as part of an investigation into the coup attempt.

Anadolu Agency said the Istanbul chief public prosecutor’s office had issued a detention order for 173 personnel working at the city’s Çağlayan, Bakırköy and Gaziosmanpaşa courthouses.

Police entered the courthouses Monday morning to detain the suspects and conduct searches of their offices and computers, while other teams were searching their homes, Anadolu reported.

Agence France-Presse and Associated Press contributed to this report.