In this Thursday, Nov. 26, 2015 photo, Can Dundar, right, the editor-in-chief of opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet, and Erdem Gul, left, the paper’s Ankara representative, speak to the media outside a courthouse in Istanbul, Turkey.
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The images reportedly date back to January 2014, when local authorities searched Syria-bound trucks, touching off a standoff with Turkish intelligence officials.
Thousands of people demonstrated in Turkey yesterday in support of two journalists from a leading newspaper being held on spying charges over a report suggesting Ankara shipped arms to rebels in Syria.
Prosecutors launched an investigation into the journalists after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan filed a criminal complaint.
MIT, meanwhile, insisted the trucks had been carrying humanitarian aid rather than arms.
The two journalists have been charged with obtaining and revealing confidential state security information for political or military espionage, and with willfully aiding an armed terrorist organization, the news agency reported.
Following the earlier arrests, hundreds of protestors demonstrated in front of the Istanbul office of the Cumhurriyet newspaper in solidarity with the journalists.
“It may be the duty of someone working for the state to rescue it from a hard situation, but a journalist is not a civil servant”, he said, according to a transcript printed by Cumhuriyet, one of Turkey’s oldest dailies.
A protester in Ankara described tension mounting in Turkish society, noting that the arrests were like a “bomb” being detonated.
The prosecution follows the personal intervention of Erdogan who warned the authors of the story would pay a heavy price.
“The Prime Minister of Turkey, whom you will meet this weekend, and the regime he represents are well known for policies and practices that have flouted human rights and freedom of the press”, they said. & in 2013, the Committee to Protect Journalists stated more reporters have been in jail in Turkey – 40 – than in any different country.
The U.S. embassy, in a tweet, expressed great concern about what it said appears to another media outlet under pressure.
“We hope the Turkish courts and authorities will uphold the fundamental principle of media freedom enshrined in the Turkish Constitution”.
Group: Turkey 149th when it comes to press freedom Turkey is claimed by global organizations to have a poor record on press freedom.
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European Union and Turkish leaders including Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will meet in Brussels on Sunday in a bid to complete a deal aimed at stemming the flow of refugees from Syria into the bloc.
