Turkey: Nervin Berktaş tried in connection with controversial book

Writer Nevin Berktaş, author of the book “Difficult places that challenge the faith: Prison Cells” (published by Yediveren Yayınları in 2010), is being tried on charges of “spreading propaganda for an illegal organisation”. The case about Berktaş’s book has been pending for ten years.

The book is related to the 22 years the writer spent in prison after the 1980 military coup and describes the process of resistance in prison cells. The health conditions of the writer are reportedly very bad, as a result of the hunger strikes she carried out in 1984 and 1996.

Turkey: News website founder sentenced

Cem Büyükçakır, founder and general publications director of the Haberin Yeri website was given an eleven-month long jail sentence for publishing a reader’s comment implying that Turkish President Abdullah Gül descended from an Armenian family.
Abdullah Gül was the recipient of this year’s Chatham House prize for the statesman who made the “most significant contribution to the improvement of international relations in the previous year”.

Turkey: PM Erdogan files lawsuit against Hürriyet

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has filed a €50,000 lawsuit against the newspaper Hürriyet and its editor-in-chief, Oktay Eksi. On 28 October, the newspaper ran a column entitled: “We have not been as critical as we should have been”, referring to the critical stance the media outlet had taken regarding the government policies on the construction of Hydroelectric Power Plants in the Ikizdere Valley, in the Eastern Black Sea region. After the article’s publication, Eksi issued a short note of apology and resigned as editor-in-chief of the newspaper.

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