Berlin – The Turkish journalist Can Dündar, who lives in exile in Germany, was sentenced by a Turkish court on Wednesday to more than 27 years in prison. The court accused the journalist of obtaining state secrets for espionage purposes. Judge Akın Gürlek also convicted him of supporting terrorism.
The 59-year-old journalist has lived in Germany since the late summer of 2016 and there are several lawsuits against him in Turkey. However, Germany is unlikely to extradite the former editor-in-chief of the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet.
The most recent statement was prompted by a 2015 report in Cumhuriyet, when Dündar was editor-in-chief. In May 2015, the anti-government publication reported alleged secret arms transfers by Turkish intelligence to Syrian rebel groups.
According to Dündar’s report, the trucks that transported the weapons through Turkey belonged to the Turkish intelligence service MIT. The truck drivers reportedly identified themselves as MIT members to the police officers who stopped the vehicles. The trucks had stopped on two different days in Ceyhan, Adana province and Hatay in early 2014. In both cases, the weapons were discovered under a load of medical supplies. The weapons were reportedly grenade launchers, complete with projectiles and large amounts of ammunition for machine guns and other weapons.
Dündar is said to have received the information and photos of the smuggling wagons from Enis Berberoğlu, the former editor-in-chief of the major daily newspaper Hürriyet. Berberoğlu later became a member of parliament for the CHP opposition party. He himself was in prison until the summer of 2020.
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Other Turkish media also reported on the arms smuggling. Aydınlık, a smaller daily newspaper, had published the report before Dündars Cumhüriyet, but the journalists were never convicted of publishing the story.
But Dündar was convicted in 2016 of publishing state secrets.
However, this verdict was later overturned when the Supreme Court insisted that he also be accountable for espionage. After three months in custody, Dündar was released in early 2016 by order of Turkey’s Constitutional Court, shortly after narrowly escaping an assassination attempt during a trial. At the time, Dündar was sentenced to more than five prison terms, but managed to flee to Germany.
Indirectly, the 14th Istanbul Jury Court Chamber admitted in its latest judgment that Dündar was right in his accusation of illegally supplying weapons to Syrian rebels. Dündar was sentenced to 18 years and nine months in prison for obtaining classified information “for the purpose of espionage.”
However, the charge of illegally publishing state secrets was dropped. The court also sentenced Dündar to eight years and nine months in prison for supporting terrorism. That charge has been brought against most of the dissidents in Turkey since the 2016 coup attempt.
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The Istanbul court based its judgment on a letter sent to the UN Security Council by Bashir Jaafari, the former permanent representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations, in 2015.
CBS News received the letter from Jaafari complaining to the UN that the Turkish government was smuggling weapons into Syria. Jaafari cites the article by Can Dündar as proof of this.
“Now the Turkish government is using this letter as proof that I am spying on the Syrian government,” Dündar told CBS News.
Dündar’s lawyers boycotted the conviction. They accused the court of acting on political instructions from the government and violating the rights of the accused. For example, they said that the court had deliberated on the matter several times without the defense.
Since Dündar fled to Germany, all his belongings in Turkey had been confiscated several months ago.
“We’ve been expecting this outcome for five years,” Dündar told CBS News. “They were trying to find the right judge who would pass this foolish verdict because it’s not easy to accuse someone of espionage without any evidence.”
“Now they have a letter from a Syrian official who simply cites various reports on the arms transfers, and the Turkish judges call that evidence. It’s ridiculous,” he added.
The opposition calls judge Akın Gürlek “Erdoğan’s trigger”.
Also, Dündar’s wife, Dilek – who joined her husband in exile in the summer of 2019 – called the conviction a joke: “Can became Bond 008 overnight – this is ridiculous.”
Dündar is now going to the European Court of Human Rights. “My lawyers will appeal to the Supreme Court, but I don’t expect anything from it because it is under Erdoğan’s control,” Dündar told CBS News.
“Everyone knows that these decisions and rulings are political and not judicial,” he said.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had repeatedly referred to Dündar as an “agent”. He also rejected a judgment by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Wednesday, which demanded the release of Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş in the highest instance. As a result, Turkey’s exclusion from the Council of Europe is now likely on the agenda.
Critics of the Erdoğan government see the decision in the Dündar case as further evidence that Turkey is moving further away from European legal norms. The Strasbourg Human Rights Court on Tuesday demanded the release of Kurdish politician Demirtaş, who has been in pre-trial detention for more than four years. Demirtaş is being held for political reasons, European judges said.
The Strasbourg court also demanded the release of democracy activist Osman Kavala, who has been in prison for more than three years. Like Dündar, Demirtaş and Kavala were publicly denounced by Erdoğan as enemies of the state.
As a member of the Council of Europe, Turkey is obliged to implement the Strasbourg rulings. However, in the case of Demirtaş and Kavala, Ankara refuses to do so.
Turkey is regularly criticized internationally for its systematic restriction of press freedom. The country is currently ranked 154th in the international press freedom rankings of the organization Reporters Without Borders.
This verdict deters other journalists, Dündar said. “Who would publish a story like that knowing they could be sentenced to decades in prison?”
But he remains optimistic: “As soon as the political climate changes, all these court rulings will become invalid.”