Prosecutor pads out empty file with retweets alleged to be propaganda!

Details have emerged of the indictment against cumhuriyet.com.tr’s Editor Oğuz Güven, who has been detained due to a tweeted announcement that was soon changed in connection with a report into the death of Denizli Republic Chief Prosecutor Mustafa Alper, who lost his life in a traffic accident. News reports and Twitter posts have been cited as crime evidence in the indictment. The charge of ‘organisational propaganda’ and ‘printing or publishing terrorist organisations’ publications’ has been levelled against Güven because he posted a link to an interview with PKK administrator Cemil Bayık by our reporter Ahmet Şık that was cited as grounds for the latter’s detention.

A charge was brought in the Cumhuriyet investigation over the interview entitled ‘Either Apo goes to Qandil or We to İmralı’ that Ahmet Şık conducted on 16 March 2015 with KCK Executive Council Co-Chair Cemil Bayık. At that time in which the solution process was underway, hundreds of interviews with PKK people on Qandil and in mountainous areas of the country were published. Indeed, a reporter from Anadolu Agency even attended the PKK’s press statement at which it announced that it would move its arms abroad. Prosecutor Celal Sarıdere, who is conducting the investigation into Güven, has concealed this fact and applied the same double standard to Güven that was applied to Şık. Sarıdere, in the endeavour to pad out the empty file, has also appended to the file Oğuz Güven’s post on his Twitter account in which he reproduced journalist Banu Güven’s March 2015 interview with Bayık.

Our newspaper’s website announced the loss of Chief Prosecutor Alper’s life in a traffic accident with the Tweet, ‘A lorry has mowed down Chief Prosecutor Mustafa Alper who drafted the first FETO indictment.’ The Tweet was soon deleted but, despite this, Sabah newspaper started gunning for our newspaper. Güven was arrested on 12 May charged with ‘making terrorist organisation propaganda’ and ‘defaming a person's memory’. Included in the arrest record was the link to the tweeted announcement that was deleted in 55 seconds. Because the tweeted announcement had been deleted, the link in the record was not live at the time the investigation was started. So, Yasemin Baba, who initiated the investigation, launched the investigation into a news report she had never seen based on a screenshot of the tweeted announcement, claiming to have seen the report.