Judicial torment for Ahmet Şık

An investigation was launched into our reporter Ahmet Şık, who had been detained on charges of making FETO/PDY propaganda, due to replies involving political criticism he gave to a journalist’s questions on 31 October 2016 during the operation conducted against our newspaper. Şık yesterday made statement to prosecutor Umut Tepe of the Istanbul Republic Chief Prosecution Press Offences Investigation Office charged with ‘defaming the president’.

Journalist Ahmet Şık spent eleven months in detention in 2011, charged with membership of Ergenekon due to his book ‘The Imam’s Army’ about the Gülen brotherhood. Following the passage of five years, Şık now found himself detained on charges of making FETO/PDY propaganda with his reports in November 2016 and his Twitter posts cited as grounds. In the Cumhuriyet indictment that was released in April, however, this charge was dropped and PKK/KCK and DHKP-C-related charges were levelled against Şık. On acceptance of the indictment, the hearing date was set for 24 July. With the countdown to the hearing underway, yet another fresh investigation has been launched into Şık. Prosecutor Umut Tepe is focusing an investigation on replies that Şık gave to journalist Ece Zereycan’s questions on 31 October during the operation against Cumhuriyet.

Find the real criminals

Şık noted in his statement he made to prosecutor Umut Tepe with reference to the charges that the utterances in question were not made with intent to defame Erdoğan and said, ‘The things I said in the utterances for which I am being charged were political criticism. Each thing pointed out a truth that is rooted in fact. The partner in power of the Gülen brotherhood, now given the alias of FETO, was the AKP and its leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and he himself asked for forgiveness from God and the people, saying, ‘We denied them nothing they asked for’ and ‘I also assisted them greatly.’ With the opening of an investigation called for into a person or people who have admitted their guilt, on the contrary, journalists and people from Cumhuriyet newspaper, who have for their entire professional and political past endeavoured to warn of the danger posed by the Fethullah Gülen brotherhood, have been detained on charges of FETO affiliation. Rather than seeking intent to defame in political criticism pointing to concrete facts, the real criminals must be gone after. An investigation should be launched for the crimes of abuse of position and dereliction of duty into members of the judiciary who have failed to open an investigation into suspects, regardless of their status, over whom there exists serious suspicion despite their also having confessed to their crimes.’ Şık was sent to Silivri Prison after his statement.

The judiciary on Şık’s back

Following his detention, an investigation has been launched into Şık for a further two articles he penned two years ago. One of these was a report into prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz being taken hostage concerning which prosecutor Umut Tepe had earlier dropped the charges. The other probe started into Şık focuses on the report dated 14 February 2015 entitled ‘Jihadists bargaining over weapons’ about telephone calls relating to purchases of arms and ammunition in the trial file into ISIS’s March 2014 Niğde attack.