The new Turkey
İdris Sayilgan
Reporter for the pro-Kurdish Dicle News Agency (DİHA)

20-Jan-2020 13:45

Medium:	Internet, Television
Charge:	Anti-state
Imprisoned:	17 October 2016

About İdris Sayılgan:

Police in Turkey's eastern province of Muş detained İdris Sayılgan, a reporter for the pro-Kurdish Dicle News Agency (DİHA), on October 17, 2016, according to press reports. On October 25, 2016, a court in Muş jailed him pending trial on charges of being a member of a terrorist organization, according to press reports.

Prosecutors questioned the journalist about his professional activities, according to records of the interrogation reviewed by CPJ. They asked Sayılgan about recorded phone conversations between the journalist and people he said were journalistic contacts.

They asked the reporter about several stories he had published, including on the firing of a local union leader, on the deaths and funerals of members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)--which Turkey classes as a terrorist organization--and on preparations for Labor Day in eastern Turkey, for the pro-PKK television station Med Nûçe TV. Interrogators also asked Sayılgan about his reporting on the arrest of a Kurdish politician's daughter on suspicion of membership in the PKK, and his requests to interview a PKK leader, the documents show.

Prosecutors asked the journalist about a recorded phone call he had made related to the production of a DİHA documentary about a slain PKK fighter, a post the journalist published on Facebook about the documentary, whether DİHA had an editorial policy of covering the deaths of PKK militants, and how rigorous the news agency’s editorial process was. Sayılgan denied producing propaganda for the PKK, the record of his interrogation shows.

Sayılgan told his interrogators that he had written thousands of news stories, and that prosecutors were focusing on a few of his published stories to make him appear guilty, the records show.

Turkish authorities persistently targeted DİHA journalists with arrest and prosecution, has found, before the government used emergency powers it assumed after a failed July 2016 military coup to order the news agency closed by decree on October 29, 2016.

An indictment presented to the court on July 11, 2017 focused on Sayılgan’s reporting as alleged evidence of his PKK membership.

Sayılgan appeared in court for the first time on September 12, 2017, nearly a year after his arrest, according to news reports. The court denied the journalist's plea to be released pending trial.

Sayılgan was in Trabzon Prison at the northern province of the same name, and on trial at the Muş Court of Serious Crimes.

Sayılgan was unable to attend a May 23, 2018 court hearing via teleconference due to a technical malfunction, according to the news website Gazete Karınca. The Muş court ordered that the journalist be jailed pending the duration of his trial and set the next hearing for October 5.

At that hearing, the court again did not release the journalist and set the next hearing date for December 24, 2018, according to reports. Sayılgan was able to attend the October hearing via teleconference. He reminded the court he has been under arrest for two years and said, “This arrest is neither moral nor conscionable. It has nothing to do with the law. I am an opposition journalist. This case means to silence opposition journalists.”
Source: https://cpj.org/data/people/idris-sayilgan/

27 November 2017:

Journalist İdris Sayılğan released by appellate court

Journalist İdris Sayılğan was freed on 27 November 2019, after spending more than three years behind bars.

Sayılğan, a former reporter from the shuttered Dicle News Agency (DİHA), was sentenced to 8 years and 3 months in prison on the charges of “terrorist group membership” and “disseminating terrorist group propaganda”in January 2019. The appellate court in Erzurum which deliberated on the appeal request of Sayılğan, ruled for Sayılğan to be released.

Last week it was discovered that a new indictment against Sayılğan, on the charge of “disseminating propaganda for a terrorist organization through press,”was drafted and the first hearing of the trial is to take place in January.

25 January 2019:

Muş court sentences DİHA reporter to 8 years in prison

A court of the southeastern city of Muş on January 25 sentenced İdris Sayılgan, a reporter for the shuttered pro-Kurdish Dicle News Agency (DİHA), to eight years and three months for "being a member of a [terrorist] organization [PKK]" and "making propaganda for a [terrorist] organization," the pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya News Agency reported.

Sayılgan has been in custody since October 2016. In his final testimony to the court, the journalist said he was strip-searched while being moved from prison. Sayılgan pleaded not guilty and asked to be acquitted, the report said.

30 December 2018:

Journalist Idris Sayilgan remains behind bars

ÖZKAN KÜÇÜK

Journalist Idris Sayilgan (the correct spelling of the journalist’s name bearing special letters of the Turkish alphabet is: İdris Sayılğan) who has been in pre-trial detention for over two years, was ordered to remain behind bars at the end of the fifth hearing of his trial on the charge of “membership in a terrorist group.”

The hearing took place on 24 December at the 2nd High Criminal Court of Muş.

Three people from the families of each defendant in the case as well as press members were admitted to the courtroom as viewers. All members of the audience were subjected to body search. They were also ordered to turn off their mobile phones. Not all audience seats in the courtroom were occupied but numerous police officers in uniforms sat among the audience throughout the hearing.

At the start of the hearing, Sayilgan’s lawyer Barış Oflas addressed the court and requested a suspension by reason of judicial question on the grounds of an application they lodged with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) concerning Sayilgan’s lengthy pre-trial detention.

The court rejected Oflas’s request and went on to hear the prosecutor’s final opinion of the case. The prosecution requested that Sayilgan and other jailed defendants in the case be convicted of “membership in a terrorist group” and the continuation of their detention.

“What I did was journalism and journalism is not a crime”

Sayilgan addressed the court from the Trabzon E Type Prison via the courtroom video-conferencing system SEGBİS. In his defense statement he gave in Kurdish, Sayilgan said he did not trust the panel of judges or the proceedings. He said the panel’s outlook on this case was not legally or morally but politically motivated. Sayilgan said he would not make a defense statement although he did prepare one for the hearing. “I have no requests from this panel. I do not request to be released. I have no expectations from this panel,” Sayilgan said.

Sayilgan added: “Like I said before, I am a journalist. All I did was journalism. And journalism is not a crime.”

Lawyers representing the other defendants in the case requested additional time to prepare final defense statements in response to the prosecution’s final opinion.

Sayilgan’s lawyer Oflas submitted to the court the documents pertaining to their application before the ECtHR. Oflas said that in addition to his client’s lengthy pre-trial detention leading to a right violation, Sayilgan’s rights to defense and a fair trial were also violated and that they were expecting the ECtHR to render a judgment in favor of his client soon. “Idris may be standing trial here, but Turkey is standing trial before the ECtHR,” the lawyer said.

Issuing an interim ruling at the end of the hearing, the panel ruled to keep all jailed defendants in pre-trial detention and adjourned the trial until 25 January 2019 for the final defense statements to be prepared. Source

5 October 2018:

İdris Sayılğan trial adjourned until December

The fourth hearing in a trial where jailed DİHA reporter İdris Sayılğan is accused of “membership in a terrorist organization” was held on 5 October in the eastern city of Muş.

Sayılğan, who has been in pretrial detention for two years, addressed the court from the Trabzon Prison via the courtroom video-conferencing system SEGBİS during the hearing. In his defense statement, Sayılğan said he was a dissident journalist and that the trial was aimed at silencing the opposition.

Sayılğan’s reporting and his phone conversations with his sources are among the grounds for the accusations in the indictment.
In its interim ruling at the end of the hearing, the 2nd Highi Criminal Court of Muş ordered the continuation of Sayılğan’s detention and adjoutned the trial until 24 December 2018.

**Source

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The new Turkey İdris Sayilgan Reporter for the pro-Kurdish Dicle News Agency (DİHA)

Journalist Idris Sayilgan remains behind bars

The new Turkey
İdris Sayilgan
Reporter for the pro-Kurdish Dicle News Agency (DİHA)