{"id":8520,"date":"2015-05-27T06:12:38","date_gmt":"2015-05-27T11:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8520"},"modified":"2015-05-27T06:12:38","modified_gmt":"2015-05-27T11:12:38","slug":"press-freedom-on-trial-in-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8520","title":{"rendered":"Press Freedom on Trial in Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"subheadlinestyle\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2015\/05\/27\/press-freedom-on-trial-in-turkey\/\" target=\"_blank\">Press Freedom on Trial in Turkey<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"subheadlinestyle\"><strong>The Prosecution of Baris Ince<\/strong><\/div>\n<div class=\"main-text\">\n<p>On June 2<sup>nd<\/sup>, a trial will begin in Caglayan Istanbul Second Criminal Court. Baris Ince, the editor-in-chief of the Turkish independent daily newspaper,\u00a0<em>BirGun,<\/em>\u00a0is being sued under Article 229 of the Turkish Criminal Code for \u201cdefamation of the President\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The newspaper printed an acrostic to spell out the phrase \u201cThief Tayyip,\u201d referring to the then Prime Minister (now President) Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It is a slogan chanted on the streets by millions of Turkish protestors. For printing this slogan, the prosecution seeks a five and a half year prison sentence for Baris Ince.<\/p>\n<p>After the 1971\u00a0<em>coup d\u2019\u00e9tat<\/em>\u00a0in Turkey, veteran journalist, Ilhan Selcuk (1925-2010), used an acrostic to spell out the sentence, \u201cI am under torture\u201d, The penultimate word of each sentence of his article began with the letters to spell out this sentence. \u0130lhan Sel\u00e7uk inaugurated this tradition of using an acrostic. Baris Ince honored that tradition with the phrase printed in\u00a0<em>BirGun.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Our Editor-in-Chief demonstrated that there are facts hidden in Turkey by the silence bought through political pressure. His act was a political criticism.<\/p>\n<p>Political criticism should not earn a five and a half year prison sentence for a newspaper\u2019s Editor-in-Chief.\u00a0<em>BirGun\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0work honors the country with its contribution to the media. The prosecutor\u2019s claim is not only unreasonable, but also unjust.<\/p>\n<p>During the campaigns around corruption in Turkey, millions of people chanted the slogan \u2013 \u201cThief Tayyip\u201d \u2013 in demonstrations. What\u00a0<em>BirGun<\/em>did is not personal defamation. It reported the reaction on the streets to the corruption and bribery charges.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Press Freedom on Trial in Turkey The Prosecution of Baris Ince On June 2nd, a trial will begin in Caglayan Istanbul Second Criminal Court. Baris Ince, the editor-in-chief of the Turkish independent daily newspaper,\u00a0BirGun,\u00a0is being sued under Article 229 of the Turkish Criminal Code for \u201cdefamation of the President\u201d. The newspaper printed an acrostic to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5745,5493,5746,462,5747,938,818],"class_list":["post-8520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-baris-ince","tag-counterpunch","tag-instanbul","tag-journalism","tag-political-criticism","tag-press-freedom","tag-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8521,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8520\/revisions\/8521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}