Writer Ayşe Düzkan today surrendered to authorities to serve an 18-month prison sentence handed down for symbolically acting as the editor-in-chief of the now-closed Kurdish Özgür Gündem newspaper for one day.
Before being transferred to Bakırköy Women’s Prison in İstanbul, Düzkan told journalists and her friends “I feel good, I am happy, see you soon!”.
Düzkan previously announced in her column in the Yeni Yaşam daily on December 10, 2018 that she would serve her jail time. Düzkan also pointed out that currently more than 50,000 people are imprisoned in Turkey for political reasons. “Around 150 of them are journalists. I say ‘around’ because the figure keeps changing,” she added.
56 journalists and writers participated in the Özgür Gündem daily’s “Editor-in-Chief on Watch” campaign organized between May 3-August 7, 2016. 50 of those attendees have faced prosecution and 38 files have been turned into cases.
Last November, a regional appeals court upheld local court’s ruling that journalists Ayşe Düzkan, Hüseyin Aykol, Memet Ali Çelebi, Hüseyin Bektaş and Ragıp Duran are sentenced to serve in jail over spreading terorist propaganda.
Turkey is the biggest jailer of journalists in the world. The most recent figures documented by SCF show that 236 journalists and media workers were in jail as of January 29, 2018, most in pretrial detention. Of those in prison 161 were under arrest pending trial while only 75 journalists have been convicted and are serving their time. Detention warrants are outstanding for 152 journalists who are living in exile or remain at large in Turkey.
The post Writer put in prison over solidarity with Kurdish Daily appeared first on Stockholm Center for Freedom.
from Stockholm Center for Freedom https://stockholmcf.org/writer-put-in-prison-over-solidarity-with-kurdish-daily/
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