The new Turkey
Mehmet Güleş
Reporter for the pro-Kurdish Dihaber

24-Jan-2019 11:18

4 October 2018:

The 16th Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals upheld a prison sentence rendered in May for Mehmet Güleş, a former reporter for Dicle news agency (DİHA), which had been closed down through an emergency decree.
 
The 2nd High Criminal Court of Elazığ had convicted Güleş of terrorism related charges, handing down the journalist a total of 9 years, 4 months and 15 days in prison. Güleş was given 6 years and 3 months for “membership in a terrorist group” and 3 years, 1 month and 15 days for “conducting propaganda for a terrorist organization.”
 
Güleş’s lawyer appealed that verdict at the 4th Criminal Chamber of the Gaziantep Regional Court of Justice, an appellate court, which rejected the appeal.

17 August 2018:

Mehmet Güleş: Prison management confiscates books, letters in Kurdish 

Imprisoned journalist Mehmet Güleş wrote about rights violations he and other inmates have been facing in a recent letter he sent from the Elazığ Maximum Security Prison.

A former reporter for the now closed-down Dicle news agency (Dihaber), Güleş has been imprisoned since December 2016.

Güleş wrote in the letter that the prison management has been refusing to give books and letters in Kurdish language to the inmates, the Mezopotamya news agency reported. Güleş wrote that the inmates were only allowed to get Kurdish dictionaries and Kurdish grammar books, but letters written in Kurdish were not allowed to be sent or received.

Güleş also said that they were not being given cleaning products. Mirrors or tweezers for personal hygiene are also banned, Güleş wrote, adding that packages sent to inmates were only delivered after three weeks. He added that underwear and socks that are sent to prison by inmates’ relatives were not handed to inmates, forcing them to purchase such items at the commissary.

Güleş also wrote that 30 inmates in the prison were being kept in solitary confinement against their wishes, and one of those inmates was suffering from COPD.

Police in Turkey's eastern Elazığ province detained Mehmet Güleş, a reporter for the pro-Kurdish Dihaber, on December 6, 2016, the daily newspaper Evrensel and Dihaber reported. Güleş was detained while he was following a police operation of house raids which ended with the arrests of at least six others on suspicion of "being member of a [terrorist] organization," according to these press reports. Police asked Güleş for identification while he was reporting on the process, then told him that he was wanted to testify in another investigation and detained him too.

Dihaber reported the next day that a court in Elazığ ordered Güleş jailed pending trial on the charge of "being member of a [terrorist] organization." The charge was based in part on his phone conversations with sources and his reports for the pro-Kurdish DİHA news agency, which the government had closed by emergency decree in October 2016. Güleş’s reporting in real time from street battles between ethnic-Kurdish youth and Turkish security forces in Silopi was also cited as evidence against him. The Elazığ court found that Güleş praised the outlawed Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) and criticized security forces in his reports, according to Dihaber. Güleş was sent to Elazığ Prison pending trial, his employer reported.

On May 3, 2017, a court in the eastern Turkish city of Elazığ sentenced Güleş to nine years, four months, and 15 days in prison on charges of “being a member of a [terrorist] organization” and “making propaganda for a [terrorist] organization,” his employer reported. Dihaber reported that the journalist would appeal the verdict and that Güleş denied the charges. His lawyers argued that police illegally tapped his phone, and that the conversations used as evidence against him were with journalistic sources, Dihaber reported.

CPJ was unable to determine which lawyer was representing the journalist.

**Source

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