Court accepts indictment against 18 Kurdish media workers

"The free press cannot be silenced"

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The Diyarbakır 4th Heavy Penal Court has accepted an indictment against 18 media employees working for Kurdish news outlets. The suspects are charged with "being a member of an illegal organization."

Sixteen of the suspects have been arrested since June 16. The Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor's Office on March 28 submitted a 728-page indictment to the court.

As the court accepted the indictment, the confidentiality order on the file was lifted. The first hearing will be held on July 11.

The indictment includes a list of programs broadcast by Kurdish TV outlets based in foreign countries. The prosecutors considered the journalists' reports being broadcast on those outlets "connections with the organization."

Eighteen media workers are facing a jail sentence of from 7 years and 6 months to 15 years: Aziz Oruç, Elif Üngür, İbrahim Koyuncu, Lezgin Akdeniz, Mazlum Güler, Mehmet Şahin, Mehmet Ali Ertaş, Neşe Toprak, Ömer Çelik, Ramazan Geciken, Remziye Temel, Serdar Altan, Suat Doğuhan, Zeynel Abidin Bulut, Abdurrahman Öncü, Esmer Tunç, İbrahim Bayram and Mehmet Yalçın.

The files of seven suspects were separated from the case: Gülşen Koçuk, Safiye Alagaş, Mehmet Servet Yigen, İhsan Ergünlü, Ayşe Güney, Ayşe Kara and Feynaz Koçuk.

What happened?

On June 8, the police raided several homes and offices of news outlets in the predominantly Kurdish-populated province of Diyarbakır. Twenty-two people, including 20 journalists, were detained.

After eight days in detention, a judgeship ruled for the arrest of 16 journalists on "terrorist propaganda" charges, citing their news reports and social media posts as evidence.

During their interrogation, the questions they were asked included what they meant by "Kurdish question" and whether they had received instructions, an attorney of the journalists had told bianet. (HA/VK)