In the last session of the case held in the High Criminal Court in Diyarbakır province, where the majority of the population is Kurdish, Canözen was found guilty for 1 like and 4 comments she made on posts made by others. This was considered “propaganda for a terrorist organization.” The post and comments were not open to the public and were private. However, the Turkish intelligence, in order to find something, anything, criminal digs deep and gains access to private conversations in the social media to criminalize regular people or journalists as in this case.
Journalist gets prison sentence for her social media ”likes”
Beritan Canözen works as a correspondent for Jinnews news agency. However, living in Turkey has its very high risks for journalists as she just received a prison sentence.
One main task of the Turkish government is to follow, harass and discipline the journalists who are not sympathetic to the current government. Beritan’s news agency is one that the Turkish government does not like, so somebody had to pay a price.
The government appointed prosecutor opened an investigation against Canözen that resulted in 1 year 10 months and 15 days prison sentence for the correspondent because the government was not too happy with what she “liked” in her social media account between the years 2013 and 2016. The government in Turkey has a long memory and never forgets.
In the last session of the case held in the High Criminal Court in Diyarbakır province, where the majority of the population is Kurdish, Canözen was found guilty for 1 like and 4 comments she made on posts made by others. This was considered “propaganda for a terrorist organization.” The post and comments were not open to the public and were private. However, the Turkish intelligence, in order to find something, anything, criminal digs deep and gains access to private conversations in the social media to criminalize regular people or journalists as in this case.
The court sided with the appointed prosecutor and decided on a 1 year 10 months and 15 days sentence for Beritan Canözen.
Turkey is the top country in the world where journalists are punished for their reporting.
Sendika.org news (M.B.)