Turkish government has escalated its attack on the media to a full scale, frontal attack. OdaTV is the latest center of the attack for the last two days.
After arresting journalist Hülya Kılınç and the chief editor Barış Terkoğlu yesterday, now the General Publishing Manager Bariş Pehlivan has been sent to the court with a request for arrest by the Turkish prosecutor.
Turkish government has escalated its attack on the media to a full scale, frontal attack. OdaTV is the latest center of the attack for the last two days.
After arresting journalist Hülya Kılınç and the chief editor Barış Terkoğlu yesterday, now the General Publishing Manager Bariş Pehlivan has been sent to the court with a request for arrest by the Turkish prosecutor.
Earlier, journalist Hülya Kılınç and the chief editor Barış Terkoğlu were arrested charged with “endangering the life of intelligent officers” and arrested by the same court. The charges were brought against the journalists when a secret funeral of a high-ranking intelligence officer killed in Libya was published by the OdaTV site managed by the defendants. Turkey is trying hard to cover up the deaths of several high ranking generals and intelligence officers killed in Libya. The news of Hafter forces wiping out the top military staff in Libya comes at a time when the largest number of casualties suffered by the Turkish army in Syria is rocking the country. Government is doing its best to keep the deaths under cover for fear of public questioning on the reasons the Turkish army is involved in overseas.
Even though the Turkish authorities are using a law that protects the identities and information on the intelligence officers to charge the journalists, the irony of this case is that all the information published at OdaTV had already been revealed publicly and openly at sessions in the Turkish National Assembly.
Not holding any punches, the prosecutors at the Turkish court decided to include the General Publishing Manager of OdaTV, Bariş Pehlivan, in the case as well. Pehlivan was then called to testify today and after the questioning he was sent to the punitive court with a request for arrest by the prosecutor.
Ahmet Şık, an HDP party representative in the National Assembly accompanied Pehlivan to the court, giving support and solidarity. Ahmet Şık himself used to be a widely-read author, columnist and an investigative journalist before being elected to be a representative. HDP is a progressive opposition party espousing human rights, freedom of the press, democracy and minority rights.
Pehlivan reminded the press of his previous arrest and jail time spent with the now arrested chief editor of OdaTV, Barış Terkoğlu, “Him and I spent 19 months behind bars at the Silivri facility. But we got out from behind those walls. Even then, while we were enduring those persecutions, the OdaTV site was not shut down. I am currently the General Publishing Manager of OdaTV that is shut down temporarily and cannot be reached by its readers. I will most probably be a suspect in this case that Barış is also a suspect. That is why they asked me here and called my attorney. I came to testify.
The police didn’t have to raid Barış’s home at 4:00AM like they did not when they detained the terrorist organization members of Fethullah Gülen. None of us here are the type of people who would run. We are the people of this land. We pose no flight risk. Just like how we were arrested for journalism before and paid the price for doing journalism, we will again go to prison if needed for our journalism work. But when we are released, we will again do journalism.”
Sendika.org News (M.B.)
