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Turkey orders formal arrest of 9 Cumhuriyet newspaper staff

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Re: Turkey orders formal arrest of 9 Cumhuriyet newspaper st

Postby Tim Drayton » Tue Nov 29, 2016 11:14 am

A letter from the International Press Institute to Kadri Gürsel, one of the Cumhuriyet journalists who has been remanded in custody in a manner that makes a mockery of the country’s the Code of Criminal Procedure and on ludicrous charges:

Dear Kadri,

I hope that this finds you doing as well as possible, given the current circumstances. Your detention and continued imprisonment has come as a profound shock to all of us at IPI and I write to share our unwavering support for you, your Cumhuriyet colleagues and all journalists behind bars for their work.
We are well aware of your courage and your absolute and unquestionable dedication to independent journalism as the only type of journalism that deserves this name. A journalism that aims at understanding and explaining society in all of its complexity and multifaceted aspects; at exposing what is wrong and what is against the interest of the people and the fundamental values and principles on which our democracy stands. A journalism without which democracy cannot exist.

We recognize how much you already have suffered for this and we knew that imprisonment was a risk for standing up for this principle in Turkey. But we nevertheless are disturbed that this has come to pass.

For years, we have fought by your side for the rights of our colleagues in Turkey; for the freedom of numerous journalists held for years without trial, justice or even clarity about the accusations they face.

For years, we also have listened to Turkish government representatives’ empty promises to respect the independence of the judiciary, and to their ridiculous insistences that the dozens and dozens of journalists that they imprison – often to release later, with no charge – are criminals and terrorists.
We saw the depths to which they would stoop to manufacture cases against their critics, yet we trusted that your record of integrity and support for democracy and human rights ultimately would shield you from becoming a victim of these same abuses.

Our members, our partners and allies around the world – your friends around the world – keep asking us about you. They want to know how you are doing and what can be done; how can we stop this madness and win freedom for you and your colleagues? I wish that we could ask you directly and I know that you would show us a sensible way ahead, as you so often have done in the past.

It is absurd that you, Murat Sabuncu, your Cumhuriyet colleagues and more than 100 other journalists are in prison. It is absurd because, as rational beings, we cannot help but continue to hope for justice and a return to the rule of law in Turkey, even if we know that both have long been absent.
It is doubly absurd because, as all of your colleagues at IPI know – from our Executive Board, to our members, to our staff – you have stood for the highest ethical and professional standards within our community. You are the one who has always reminded us that any degree of compromise in journalistic integrity imperils public interest journalism and our fight to ensure its survival.

But now, Turkey’s government persecutes you and your colleagues for allegedly supporting militants and terrorists that Cumhuriyet has criticised for years, including when they were the government’s allies. Now editors and journalists of one of Turkey’s most respected and serious newspapers are in prison on lies the government has not even bothered to fabricate evidence to support. If any good comes of this, we hope that it finally dispels any illusion that Turkey’s current government respects justice or law.

Kadri, the whole IPI community is behind you and your colleagues; the free thinkers and opinion leaders of the world, who, like you, will never accept the crushing of justice and fundamental human rights, and who have admired you for your efforts to safeguard Turkey’s much-mistreated democracy.
We ask that you stay strong and know that we are with you. Injustice stands today, but it will not prevail. This battle may be long, but we will not stop fighting until you and your colleagues walk free.

In solidarity with you all,

Barbara Trionfi.


http://www.freemedia.at/ipi-sends-lette ... in-turkey/
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Re: Turkey orders formal arrest of 9 Cumhuriyet newspaper st

Postby B25 » Tue Nov 29, 2016 12:26 pm

Blah blah blah, letters, BS. Why doesn't someone take any action against all of this Tim???

I'll tell you why, because Turkey does this with the blessing of the USA. Pure and simple.

Doesn't matter how much is written, unless someone does something drastic to hurt Turkey, she will never stop.
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Re: Turkey orders formal arrest of 9 Cumhuriyet newspaper st

Postby Tim Drayton » Tue Nov 29, 2016 12:28 pm

B25 wrote:Blah blah blah, letters, BS. Why doesn't someone take any action against all of this Tim???

I'll tell you why, because Turkey does this with the blessing of the USA. Pure and simple.

Doesn't matter how much is written, unless someone does something drastic to hurt Turkey, she will never stop.


Fully agree.
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Re: Turkey orders formal arrest of 9 Cumhuriyet newspaper st

Postby Tim Drayton » Tue Nov 29, 2016 12:45 pm

Jerry wrote:I always believed that Erdogan purge was anti Gulen but it seems that is not so.


I leave it to the masterful pen of veteran secularist political commentator Aydın Engin, whose latest artilce in Cumhuriyet has just appeared in translation on the paper’s English-language web pages, to describe the process taking place in Turkey just now under the guise of supposedly ‘purging the coupists’:

... But, do not lose sight of another of the EU’s constitutions: the Copenhagen Criteria. All mention of the death penalty is banished from those criteria.

Those who mention it are shown the door. Within those criteria, the harshest (yes, harshest) penalties await those who attempt to stage a coup. But only those who attempt to stage a coup; those with actual involvement in this unpardonable crime against democracy are punished. Under those criteria, those who, using the coup as a pretext and deeming it to be a ‘Gift from God’, go on an assault like a bull in a china shop against all the country’s democrats, socialists, revolutionaries and government opponents and cram them into jail, deprive even those who were once on ‘nodding terms’ with the coupists of all means of subsistence and of their futures, convert schools to religious ‘seminaries’, make preparations to close newspapers and fill prison cells to the ceiling with journalists, are initially politely reminded of the Copenhagen Criteria.


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

I got a sense of deja vu, actually, reading the following in Gwynne Dyer’s article published in the latest Cyprus Sunday Mail, about Egypt’s dictator Sisi:

Last year the regime held a national coming-out party at the Sharm al-Shaikh resort: the Egyptian Economic Development Conference. It invited 1,700 investors, consultants and foreign government officials including the US secretary of state, the British foreign minister, and the head of the International Monetary Fund. They were pleased by what they heard.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair was also there. “Look,” he burbled, “I’m absolutely in favour of democracy, but I also think you’ve got to be realistic sometimes about the path of development, and that sometimes you will have a country with not what we would call 100 per cent Western-style democracy, but it is going in a direction of development that is really important.”

Far away from the conference hall, however, tens of thousands of innocent people rotted in jail, and real terrorists affiliated with Islamic State and al-Qaeda ruled over northern Sinai and regularly set off bombs in Cairo.


http://cyprus-mail.com/2016/11/27/egypt ... democracy/

Yes, another dictator appears to be well on the way to obtaining the new-world-order seal of approval. What’s the secret? Easy, allow global capital unbridled access to your country, introduce massive privatisation programmes in which international companies walk away with the crown jewels and crack down hard on trade unions to keep wages down and global capital's profits up.
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Re: Turkey orders formal arrest of 9 Cumhuriyet newspaper st

Postby Tim Drayton » Mon Dec 26, 2016 6:02 pm

Turkey gets more and more like Assad's Syria every day. Now the man who works in Cumhuriyet newspaper's canteen has been hauled before the courts and remanded in custody for making an off the cuff comment to a police officer there that he would not serve tea to president Erdoğan! I wonder when we will hear the West clamouring Erdoğan must go? I'm not holding my breath.

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/engl ... Buran.html
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Re: Turkey orders formal arrest of 9 Cumhuriyet newspaper st

Postby Tim Drayton » Mon Jan 16, 2017 6:44 pm

Tim Drayton wrote:Turkey gets more and more like Assad's Syria every day. Now the man who works in Cumhuriyet newspaper's canteen has been hauled before the courts and remanded in custody for making an off the cuff comment to a police officer there that he would not serve tea to president Erdoğan! I wonder when we will hear the West clamouring Erdoğan must go? I'm not holding my breath.

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


I hadn't noticed before, but I see that the BBC covered the above story:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38439232

which is curious given that the Western media usually avoids stories that reflect badly on Erdoğan. It is still telling that there is a picture of Erdoğan on the page rather than of the poor canteen operator at one of the last remaining opposition papers in the country who was thrown in jail for making an off-the-cuff comment to a policeman that he wouldn't serve a tea to Erdoğan if he visited the paper, hardly a likely occurence given that Erdoğan has his sights set on either closing it or bringing it under new ownership that will follow a pro-regime line. Still, maybe attitudes or perceptions are changing in the West.
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Re: Turkey orders formal arrest of 9 Cumhuriyet newspaper st

Postby Tim Drayton » Sat Jan 28, 2017 10:03 am

The leading staff members of Turkey's main opposition newspaper, Cumhuriyet, are spending their 90th day on remand, charged with aiding an Islamist organisation to commit a coup when these are people whose lives have been devoted to defending the values of the secular republic and opposing political Islam, yet no indictment is in sight. Their real crime? Opening their mouths in opposition to Erdoğan. Despite everything, the paper continues to appear in print form every day and online.

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Re: Turkey orders formal arrest of 9 Cumhuriyet newspaper st

Postby Zenon33 » Sat Jan 28, 2017 10:21 pm

Tim Drayton wrote:Turkey gets more and more like Assad's Syria every day. Now the man who works in Cumhuriyet newspaper's canteen has been hauled before the courts and remanded in custody for making an off the cuff comment to a police officer there that he would not serve tea to president Erdoğan! I wonder when we will hear the West clamouring Erdoğan must go? I'm not holding my breath.

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




I don't think so.
Erdogan is more dangerous than Assad.
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Re: Turkey orders formal arrest of 9 Cumhuriyet newspaper st

Postby Tim Drayton » Sun Jan 29, 2017 10:05 am

Don’t worry. Teresa May has secured an undertaking!

“And now it is important that Turkey sustains that democracy by maintaining the rule of law and upholding its international human rights obligations — as the government has undertaken to do,” she said.


https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017 ... nkara.html

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Why was she even shaking hands with this tyrant?
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Re: Turkey orders formal arrest of 9 Cumhuriyet newspaper st

Postby Tim Drayton » Mon Jan 30, 2017 3:08 pm

The following article on Cumhuriyet newspaper's English language pages totally demolishes the charges levelled against the paper and its staff:

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