Cyprus-Forum.com

[Tim Drayton]

And one of the lawyers has a broken leg:

[Tim Drayton]

There is a more detailed report here about yesterday's totally disproportionate police intervention against a group of lawyers holding a dignified silent vigil for people they consider to have been wrongly detained:

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/engl ... ntion.html

[Tim Drayton]

Despite the action of a handful of lawyers sitting on the steps in front of a court complex and holding a silent vigil in solidarity with three of their colleagues who have been in detention for five months on totally ludicrous charges (essentially of being employees of an oppostion newspaper and according to Turkey's lunatic dictator all who oppose him are terrorists) meeting with a totally disproportionate and brutal police intervention that led to one of them suffering a broken nose and one a broken leg, the lawyers have expressed their resolve to hold next week's 'Justice Watch'.

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/engl ... watch.html

[Tim Drayton]

In another truly Kafkaesque development, they are now starting to arrest and detain ordinary workers on the payroll of Cumhuriyet newspaper. They are being held in custody at the Anti-Terrorism Branch and a confidentiality order has been passed over their case, a measure only available in terrorism cases, with the result that the arrestees themselves do not even know what they are charged with. In Erdoğan's ever-paraniod realm where voicing opposition to his increasingly authoritarian rule is an act of terror, even working at an opposition newspaper is seemingly deemd to amount to involvement in terrorism. I have read Cumhuriyet for many years and have never seen any support for terrorism in this level-headed newspaper that supports the secular order ushered in by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish state, and so stands in steadfast oppostion to Erdoğan and his Islamist AKP party which, bankrolled and supported by the feudal Gulf monarchies, is gradually transforming Turkey from a secular into an Islamist state - and one day the West will wake up and realise that this is not to its interest, probably when it is too late.

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/engl ... _iper.html

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/engl ... ested.html

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/engl ... ested.html

[repulsewarrior]

...even as an Islamic State, it fails.

I ask, where is the Love? There is none. As far as i can see this is perpetual war only feeding on its own hatred for anything else. That is not Islam, that is not any World Religion.

[Tim Drayton]

Journalists held a march in Beyoğlu, a central area in Istanbul, today to mark the 100th day in detention of Ahmet Şık, one of the ever growing band of Cumhuriyet detainees. He has 'only' been in detention for 100 days because he was arrested later than the original nine. If he stands charged of being one of the country's best investigative journalists, I would say he is guilty, except that is not a crime as far as I know. I do not believe him to be guilty of anything else, and certainly not terrrorism.

The following press statement was read out at the march, translated by Şık's Cumhuriyet newspaper:

Times are changing and everything is changing. The one that does not change is the oppression, violence and restriction on freedom meted out to journalists in Turkey.
The most tragicomic example of this is undoubtedly Ahmet Şık.
Ahmet Şık, who was imprisoned in 2011 under conspiracies by the police, public prosecutors and judges under the control of the Gulenists, has been in jail for one hundred days.
Why has he been jailed?
Because he is a journalist and he persisted in conducting journalism to certain people’s displeasure and in seeking out the truth.
Do not imagine that we his journalist colleagues are saying this. No, on the contrary, not we, but the Cumhuriyet indictment that appeared last week says this.
All the accusations have to do with journalistic activity. To the extent that the word ‘news’ appears 664 times in the indictment.
News reports compiled by journalists for whom independence is their watchword are unfortunately today accepted as being ‘evidence of crime’ by the Republic of Turkey’s Republic prosecutors and courts. Evidence of crime!
The natural consequence of this is that not only Ahmet Şık, but Kadri Gürsel, Murat Sabuncu, Güray Öz, Tunca Öğreten, Deniz Yücel, Musa Kart, İnan Kızılkaya and tens more journalists are in detention.
We are here in Tünel today on the one hundredth day that Ahmet Şık has spent in detention for the purpose of crying out once more our demand of ‘freedom for all the detained journalists’ who have been put in jail for conducting journalism, without favouring one over the other.
Basically, the message given to all of us, all journalists, by detaining our colleagues, holding them in solitary confinement and preventing them from receiving and writing letters is clear:
Do not see, do not hear and do not speak.
They want us to act like the three monkeys.
But, let everyone know that three monkeys will not emerge from the tradition of those like Sabahattin Alile, Uğur Mumcu, Ape Musa, Metin Göktepe, Hrant Dink and Yaşar Kemal.
We will see, hear, speak, write, think and defend until the last the right of our people to obtain news.
And, more important than everything, we will not forget.
It was only yesterday that President Erdoğan was saying that Turkey, like Portugal, would have a per capita income of 22,000 euro.
Societies that lack a free press, do not debate the actions of officials and do not criticise cannot develop economically. There is no example in the world of a country that has both imprisoned journalists and attained economic well-being.
Today, just as yesterday, we also want justice.
Today, just as yesterday, we also call for the release of journalists.
Finally stop giving rise to pangs of conscience.
‘Down with despotism, long live freedom.’
Journalists on the outside.

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/engl ... eedom.html

The thing that puzzles me is why the police did not intervene against this one.

[Tim Drayton]

About 150 lawyers held a repeat of the 'Justice Watch' this week, and it passed of without incident. I wonder if Erdoğan and his cronies have decided that heavy police interventions will make bad publicity in the final days before the referendum.

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/engl ... agues.html

[Tim Drayton]

The Justice Watch was held for the third time today, with participation by lawyers from Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK.



http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/turk ... estek.html

[Tim Drayton]

A recent article in the Washington Post by a journalist who visited Cumhuriyet newspaper:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mi ... 5039343d5c

[Tim Drayton]

They seem to be going for death by a thousand cuts at Cumhuriyet, with them now having arrested the paper’s internet editor, Oğuz Güven, for a headline that appeared above an online news story:

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/engl ... crime.html

They closed down another opposition newspaper, Özgür Gündem, in one surgical swoop. They obviously have the power to do this, so I wonder why they are trying to kill Cumhuriyet slowly? Possibly because it is the oldest and one of the most respected newspapers in the country.

The following comments about this arrest by some of the country’s top legal experts – all but one are present or past bar association chairs so they are not people who would speak without carefully weighing up the consequences - are very telling. Yet, they are saying in no uncertain terms that the rule of law in Turkey is now entirely dead. It is brave of them to come out with this, too, even if it is what everybody has known for some time.

Ankara Bar Association Chair Hakan Canduran: To take a word in a tweet and turn this into a constitutional crime is an exercise that really stretches the law to its limits. It is impossible to accept this. Cumhuriyet newspaper has for years forged ahead at the Republic’s side with democracy-loving journalists. Oğuz Güven must be released immediately. Today, one-third of the detained journalists in the world are in Turkey. The political rulership engages in conduct of this type to block certain things.The time has at last come to act in accordance with the law.

Former Istanbul Bar Association Chair Turgut Kazan: As there remains not a shred of the rule of law, it is impossible to assess this through a jurist’s eyes. If a member of the press is even to be interrogated, they are to be summoned by telephone or with a summons and their statement taken. To cap it all, it is impossible to consider such a sentence to be a crime. The rulership does not deem such things to be journalism and freedom of speech. So, it is impossible as a jurist to assess this in juristic terms. There is no shred of legality. Nobody has any legal safeguards, because there is no judiciary in Turkey. We are not astonished by such lawlessness.

Former Diyarbakır Bar Association Chair Turgut Kazan: The issue about which we have actually complained the most in recent times has been violations of the freedom of press and expression. Freedom of expression, which should exist in a democratic country, has been unilaterally destroyed in full. On one side, there is complete freedom to defame. But, on the other side, there is no right to exercise freedom of expression. To constantly impose restrictions on one section of society expressing its opinions and threaten them with punishment – you cannot carry on like this anymore. The rulership must abandon restrictions on freedom of expression immediately.

Celal Ülgen, Attorney-at-Law: To be arrested for posting a headline is a violation of the freedom of thought, and extending the arrest period to one week is a method for chastening through restricting people’s freedom. Such instances are incompatible with the dictionary of democracy. The implementation of procedures of this kind overshadowed by state of emergency rule has become one of Turkey’s fundamental problems. Turkey must transition immediately to a normal and civilian style of government. And the law of freedom must be reconstructed.

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/engl ... awful.html