Akın Atalay arrested on his return home

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Despite the aspersion cast on him by the poodle media that he had ‘fled’, Cumhuriyet Newspaper Executive Board Chair, Akın Atalay, has returned from Germany to Turkey. Atalay was arrested at Atatürk Airport on exiting the plane. Atalay, having arrived from Berlin at 11.30 on a Turkish Airlines flight, was apprehended by police teams that came to the plane’s door and placed in a vehicle waiting on the apron. After being detained for a while at the airport police station, Akın Atalay was later taken to Istanbul Police Headquarters.

STATEMENT BY AKIN ATALAY'S WIFE ADALET AKIN AT THE AIRPORT

Akin Atalay's wife Adalet Akin had the following to say about the operation targeting Cumhuriyet staged at Atatürk Airport: “Akın is a man of the law and has never been on the run. Some of the reports in the press are wrong. We went together to the ceremony in memory of Tarık Akın. We heard about things there out of the blue. An operation was conducted simultaneously on all our colleagues’ homes. We regard this, not as an action aimed at these people, but an action staged so as to appoint a curator to Cumhuriyet Newspaper.”

A PROSECUTOR ONCE CHARGED WITH FETÖ INVOLVEMENT HAD OUR COLLEAGUES REMANDED

As part of the operation to silence our paper, nine of our colleagues have been remanded in custody, charged with “Along with being members of the FETÖ/PDY and PKK/KCK terrorist organisations, committing crimes on behalf of the organisation,” at the behest of public prosecutor Murat İnam, himself previously charged in the “FETÖ membership” case. An order to apprehend our Executive Board Chair, Akın Atalay, was also passed in the same operation.
Akın Atalay, whom the CHP Cologne Association and Nazım Hikmet Foundation had invited to attend the ceremony in memory of Tarık Akın, was in Germany at the time of the operation. The poodle media had made reports filled with aspersions that Atalay had ‘fled’. Akın Atalay, for his part, had sent a message stating that he would return to Turkey.