Turkish Journalist Can Dündar Victim of Endless Revenge

After being threatened by President Erdogan, tried, imprisoned, and having escaped an armed attack which forced him into exile, the famous journalist Can Dündar now risks having all his property seized by the Turkish state. RSF calls for the annulment of an unacceptable and revengeful measure.

Turkish justice imposed on September 17 an unprecedented ultimatum to the famous Turkish journalist Can Dündar . Exiled in Germany since the summer of 2016, the journalist has 15 days, until October 5, 2020, to appear at his trial before the Istanbul Assize Court or, failing that, he will be considered as a ‘fugitive’ by the courts. Turkey and all of its property and bank assets in Turkey may be seized. His lawyer, Abbas Yalçin, unsuccessfully reminded the court that Dündar had attended the entire trial at first instance until the day he was attacked in front of the courthouse.

This measure, a first for 25 years, is not only’ contrary to the values ​​of democratic justice but also unjust, cruel, revengeful and disproportionate insofar as it punishes not only the journalist but all of his family,  denounces the representative of RSF in Turkey, Erol Onderoglu, who demands its cancellation ”

As Can Dündar himself summed up on ARTI TV: ‘The court decided in 4 minutes of hearing on the destruction of what I and my family took 40 years to build’ .

This measure was widely condemned by more than 500 personalities of civil society, including journalists, writers and academics (Baskin Oran, Necmiye Alpay, Hamit Bozarslan, Mihail Vasiliadis, Eren Keskin, Ergin Cinmen, Nurcan Baysal etc.), who have published this Tuesday, September 22, a joint letter denouncing a measure ‘contrary to the law and revenge ‘.

Can Dündar’s legal troubles began following the publication in 2015 of a dossier titled ‘Here are the weapons of Erdoğan ignore’ (“İşte Erdoğan’ın yok dediği silahlar”) by the daily Cumhuriyet, of which he was then. the director. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan then threatened on the official TRT antenna: ‘Whoever signed this exclusive article will pay dearly. I won’t leave it like that. ‘  

The team of the daily Cumhuriyet, which received the  RSF Press Freedom Prize  in 2015, was also the target of a wave of arrests following the failed coup in July 2016.

Can Dündar, was imprisoned in November 2015 for ‘obtaining and disseminating secret information belonging to the state for the purpose of political or military espionage’ and ‘supporting an armed terrorist organization without being part of it’. After three months in prison, he was released on the basis of a decision of the Turkish Constitutional Court qualifying his arrest as unconstitutional.

On May 6, 2016, after his appearance in particular for ‘supporting a terrorist organization’, the journalist narrowly escaped an armed attack in front of the Caglayan courthouse in Istanbul. The low sentence to which his attacker will be sentenced (10 months in prison), pushes the journalist to take the path of exile. It was in Germany that he founded the Turkish-language news site Özgürüz (We are Free). Can Dündar is also today a member of the International Commission for the Information and Democracy Initiative, initiated by RSF.

Turkey is ranked 154th out of 180 on RSF’s World Press Freedom Index .

Copyright ©2016, Reporters Without Borders. Used with the permission of Reporters Without Borders(RSF), CS 90247 75083 Paris Cedex 02 https://rsf.org

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