Berlin – Turkish journalist Can Dündar, who lives in exile in Germany, was sentenced on Wednesday to a Turkish court for more than 27 years in prison. The court accused the journalist of obtaining state secrets for espionage purposes. Judge Akın Gürlek also convicted him of supporting terrorism.
The 59-year-old journalist has been living in Germany since the end of summer 2016 and several lawsuits are underway against him in Turkey. However, it is unlikely that Germany will extradite the former editor-in-chief of the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet.
The latest verdict was determined by a report in Cumhuriyet in 2015, when Dündar was editor-in-chief. In May 2015, the anti-government publication reported on alleged secret arms deliveries by the Turkish intelligence service to Syrian rebel groups.
According to Dündar’s report, the trucks in which the weapons were transported through Turkey belonged to the Turkish intelligence service MIT. The truck drivers allegedly identified themselves as members of MIT to the police officers who stopped the vehicles. The trucks were stopped on two different days in early 2014 in Ceyhan, Adana Province and Hatay. In both cases, the weapons were found under a load of medical supplies. The weapons were believed to be grenade launchers, with projectiles and large quantities of ammunition for machine guns and other weapons.
Dündar allegedly received the information and photos of the smugglers from Enis Berberoğlu, the former editor-in-chief of the major daily Hürriyet. Berberoğlu later became a member of parliament for the opposition party CHP. He was imprisoned himself until the summer of 2020
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Other Turkish media also reported on arms smuggling. Aydınlık, a smaller daily, had published Dündar’s report just before Cumhüriyet, but journalists were never convicted of publishing the story.
But Dündar, on the other hand, had been convicted in 2016 of publishing state secrets.
However, this verdict was later overturned when the Supreme Court insisted that he also be held accountable for espionage. After three months of pre-trial detention, Dündar was released in early 2016 by order of the Turkish Constitutional Court, shortly after escaping an assassination attempt during a court trial. Dündar was sentenced to more than five prison terms at the time, but managed to escape to Germany.
Indirectly, the 14th Chamber of the Istanbul Jury Court acknowledged in its latest verdict that Dündar could have been right in his accusation of illegally supplying weapons to Syrian rebels. Dündar received 18 years and nine months in prison for obtaining secret information “for the purpose of espionage”.
However, the accusation of illegal publication of state secrets has been dropped. The court also sentenced Dündar to eight years and nine months in prison for supporting terrorism. This accusation has been brought against most dissidents in Turkey since the 2016 coup attempt.
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The Istanbul court based its verdict on a letter sent to the UN Security Council in 2015 by Bashir Jaafari, the former Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations.
CBS News obtained the letter sent by Jaafari in which it complained to the UN that the Turkish government was trafficking weapons in Syria. As proof of this, Jaafari cites, among other things, the article in Can Dündar.
“Now the Turkish government is using this letter as proof of my espionage for the Syrian government,” Dündar told CBS News.
Dündar’s lawyers boycotted the sentence. They accused the court of acting on political instructions from the government and violating the rights of the defendant. For example, they said, the court deliberated on the case several times without defense.
Since Dündar fled to Germany, all his property in Turkey was confiscated a few months ago.
“We have been expecting this result for five years,” Dündar told CBS News. “They tried to find the right judge to pronounce this stupid verdict, because it is not easy to accuse someone of espionage without any evidence.”
“Now they have a letter from a Syrian official simply quoting various reports on the delivery of weapons, and Turkish judges are calling this evidence. It is ridiculous,” he added.
The opposition calls Judge Akın Gürlek “Erdoğan’s trigger”.
Also, Dündar’s wife, Dilek – who joined her husband in exile in the summer of 2019 – called the sentence a joke: “Maybe it became Bond 008 just overnight – it’s ridiculous.”
Dündar will now go to the European Court of Human Rights. “My lawyers will appeal to the High Court, but I do not expect anything from it, because it is under Erdoğan’s control,” Dündar told CBS News.
“Everyone knows that these decisions and rulings are political and not judicial,” he said.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had repeatedly called Dündar an ‘agent’. He also rejected a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Wednesday, which had called for the release of Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaș in the highest court. Consequently, the exclusion of Turkey from the Council of Europe is likely to be on the agenda now.
Critics of the Erdoğan government consider the Dündar decision to be further evidence that Turkey is moving further and further away from European legal norms. The Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg had demanded on Tuesday the release of the Kurdish politician Demirtaș, who has been in pre-trial detention for more than four years. Demirtaș is being held for political reasons, European judges said.
The Strasbourg court also demanded the release of democracy activist Osman Kavala, who has been in prison for more than three years. Like Dündar, Demirtaș and Kavala had been publicly denounced by Erdoğan as enemies of the state.
As a member of the Council of Europe, Turkey is obliged to implement the Strasbourg verdicts. However, in the case of Demirtas and Kavala, Ankara refuses to do so.
Turkey is regularly criticized internationally for systematically restricting press freedom. Currently, the country ranks 154th in the international press freedom ranking of Reporters Without Borders.
This verdict is discouraging for other journalists, Dündar said. “Who would publish such a story now knowing that they could face decades in prison?”
But he remains optimistic: “With the change in the political climate, all these judgments will become invalid.”