On 7 May, two newspaper employees were fined over an article criticising the Turkish army’s system of patronage. Over 300 army generals sued the pro-Islamic Vakit newspaper for libel over an article entitled “The country where people who cannot become corporals become generals”. Haron Aksoy and Nuri Aykon were fined TL616,000 (£275,000) for the 2003 article.
In other news, an Istanbul court sentenced two journalists for spreading terrorist propaganda. İrfan Aktan was handed a five-year prison sentence and Merve Erol received a heavy fine for “spreading propaganda for an illegal organisation” over an article for the Express newspaper.
