Court rules out prosecution of three Turkish journalists

İsmail Saymaz – ISTANBUL

DHA photo

A court in Turkey has ruled out prosecution of three Turkish journalists, who had been accused of “making terrorist propaganda” after their books were found in the library of a house raided in the southeastern province of Gaziantep.

The court ruled that the six-month period allowed to file a criminal case against journalists Hasan Cemal, Tuğçe Tatari and Müslüm Yücel had passed but Tatari’s book “Grandmother, I Was Not Actually In Diyarbakır” could still be considered as legitimate evidence.

Saying the decision to confiscate her book was still in place, Tatari said after the ruling that in Turkey “journalists can’t do journalism.”

“Today you close an investigation but tomorrow you could open a new one. So as long as there is no democracy or free press, we can’t say there has been a good development just because a positive decision was given on us,” she added.

In December 2015, a local court decided to confiscate Cemal and Tatari’s books after they were found during a raid in which suspected militants of the outlawed Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H) were detained.