Ayşe teacher will give birth in jail, her custodial sentence upheld

Teacher Ayşe Çelik, who was prosecuted for having phoned in to the programme named Beyaz Show broadcast on Kanal D at the time of the curfews and saying, “Let children not die,” was sentenced to one year and three months’ imprisonment. Çelik’s lawyers objected to the ruling. Istanbul Regional Court of Justice’s Penal Chamber No 2, which heard the objection, upheld the custodial sentence handed down to Çelik.
 
In the ruling passed by Bakırköy Serious Crime Court No 2, Çelik was sentenced to one year and three months’ imprisonment for having portrayed the PKK’s methods that incorporate violence to be legitimate on the date of the offence and thus having committed the offence of “making a terrorist organisation’s propaganda.”
 
The court ruled that there were no grounds for deferring the sentence since the court did not form the view that the defendant would refrain from committing the offence again taking account of her personality that was incapable of contrition.
 
Sentence upheld
 
Çelik’s lawyers objected to the ruling. Istanbul Regional Court of Justice’s Penal Chamber No 2, which heard the objection, upheld the custodial sentence handed down to Çelik. Penal Chamber No 2 cited the following grounds for upholding:
 
“It was ascertained that the defendant Ayşe Çelik's act conducted in the form of phoning in to a live broadcast of a programme shown on a TV station broadcasting on a national basis and attempting to portray the terrorist organisation’s actions in residential areas of the south-east as being legitimate by means of portraying the operations of the security forces who, under the authorisation and responsibility granted by statute and displaying the maximum degree of care, were combatting the terrorists who had taken the residents of these places who had been unable to leave their homes hostage and were using them as human shields by virtue of the setting up of barricades on roads, digging of trenches and placing of booby traps and the conducting of occupation actions styled as so-called autonomy by the PKK/KCK terrorist organisation’s organisation militants in certain residential units in the east and south-east as if they were being conducted purely against the civilians living there was such that it portrayed as legitimate, praised and encouraged the armed PKK/KCK terrorist organisation’s methods that incorporate force, violence or duress, and absolutely nothing erroneous has been witnessed in the grounds set out in the local court’s acknowledgement of this.”
 
She will give birth in jail
 
Çelik’s lawyers have stated in information they supplied to Odatv that Çelik will go to jail following this decision and she was two-three months pregnant at the time of the ruling hearing and will probably give birth in jail. The lawyers said that Ayşe Çelik will serve eleven months in jail of the one year and three months’ sentence that the court handed down.