The investigation in which charges were raised over news and columns published in our newspaper was launched by prosecutor Murat İnam, who is currently undergoing prosecution at Penal Chamber No 16 of the Court of Cassation charged with membership of the Fethullahist Terrorist Organisation. As part of the investigation, initially nine of our columnists and managers were detained on 5 November 2016. Subsequently, our Executive Board Chair and lawyer, Akın Atalay, who was abroad at the time of the operation, was placed in detention on flight risk grounds on his return to the country ten days after an apprehension warrant had been issued against him. On 30 December 2016, Ahmet Şık, who had previously spent a year in detention in the Oda TV trial conducted in partnership by the AKP and the Gülen brotherhood, was also detained on charges of making FETO/PDY and PKK/KCK propaganda. With Istanbul Penal Judge of the Peace No 9 Mustafa Çakar, who placed our ten columnists and managers in detention as part of the investigation, being appointed presiding judge on an Istanbul serious crime court, one of the prosecutors who drafted our indictment, Mehmet Akif Ekinci, was elected to the Board of Judges and Prosecutors.

“Rights violation” declaration by Constitutional Court

Our columnists and managers waited 156 days for the indictment against them to be drafted. Over this time, their applications for release were dismissed by penal judgeships of the peace under unreasoned decisions that were a copy of one another. Our columnists and managers applied to the Constitutional Court (CC) on 26 December 2016 and to the European Court of Human Rights in March 2017, citing violations of their rights of security of person and freedom to express and publish ideas. On 11 January, the CC passed a rights violation ruling on the application by our Book Supplement Editor Turhan Günay, who had spent nine months in detention in the trial. Murat Sabuncu, Akın Atalay and Ahmet Şık applied for release, citing the CC ruling as grounds since they were in detention on the charges on which Turhan Günay’s nine-month detention had been based. However, Istanbul Serious Crime Court No 27, which conducted the examination, argued that the ruling only applied to Günay and dismissed the applications for release by majority vote. The dissenting member judge, Halit İçdemir, for his part, stated that Sabuncu, Atalay and Şık should be released in view of the time they had spent in detention given that the witnesses had to a large extent been heard, the evidence had been gathered and could not be tampered with and they had fixed addresses. İçdemir had also dissented to the decisions to extend detention at two of the trial’s hearings on 31 October 2017 and 25 December 2017. On the other hand, the CC gave notice in the rights violation ruling it passed on Günay that it would conduct its examination into the charges raised over the newspaper’s publications in the context of the freedom of expression and press at the time it examined our ten columnists and managers’ applications. Despite the passing of two months since then, the applications have not been brought onto the plenary session’s meeting agenda.

Right to defence blocked

At the previous hearing on 25 December 2017, Abdurrahman Orkun Dağ, the Presiding Judge of Istanbul Serious Crime Court No 27 which is conducting the trial, silenced Ahmet Şık the moment he mentioned the “AKP rulership” and removed him from the courtroom. Sabuncu and Atalay refrained from making their defences, too, on account of Şık’s right to defence having been blocked. Presiding Judge Dağ, while making a statement asserting that the right to defence had not been blocked, said, “We do not say three lawyers per head.” Lawyer Bahri Belen then recused the court bench citing the suspicion that it had lost its impartiality. The court, accepting the application, then ruled that the next hearing be held in Silivri three months later with the number of Sabuncu, Atalay and Şık’s lawyers restricted to three. The next senior court dismissed the recusal application.

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