‘Editorial Policy of a Newspaper is None of Your Business’, Says Can Dündar

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Journalist Can Dündar has made some remarks on an online news platform #Özgürüz (We are free) regarding the indictment in the lawsuit brought against some executives, columnists and employees of Cumhuriyet according to which Dündar is also among the suspects.

Responding to the claims in the bill of indictment prepared by istanbul Public Prosecutors Yasemin Baba and Mehmet Akif Ekinci that the "editorial policy of the newspaper has changed and gone beyond the aims and objectives predetermined by its founder Yunus Nadi since the suspect Can Dündar has come to an executive position in the newspaper", Dündar said "the editorial policy of a newspaper is none of your business".

"How come a prosecutor decides how the editorial policy of a newspaper should be? What kind of a fascism is this? Under what kind of a dictatorship are we living in that public prosecutors can interfere with determining the editorial policies?"

Noting that regardless of how deep they looked into, the prosecutors would not be able to find any content supporting the Gülen organization, Dündar added " Now they are accusing a newspaper which in all its articles and by all its executives has only come out against this organization within the state from the very beginning [...]. But do they have any evidence?"

"Who is to blame, the ones who committed the crime or who reported it?"

"The prosecutor says 'Cumhuriyet daily has created an impression as if the President [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] had supported terror'. Did I myself load those weapons to trucks and send them? Whose crime is this now, crime of those who committed it or of those who reported about it?" Dündar said and added that it is not only a claim but a proven fact, that the President did support terror.

The indictment in Cumhuriyet daily investigation which was covered in Sabah newspaper yesterday (April 4) before being handed to defense attorneys, demanded prison sentence for 19 suspects in the trial on charges of "Aiding an [illegal] organization as a non-member" and "being a member of an [illegal] organization". (EA/DG)