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First Özkök, Now Dumanlı, Facing Legal Action Over Claims Of Insulting Erdoğan

04.09.2015 19:02

Together with columnist Ertuğrul Özkök, Zaman Editor-in-Chief Ekrem Dumanlı is facing legal action over his allegedly insulting and threatening remarks towards President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in the latest instance of a crackdown on critical members of the media.

Together with columnist Ertuğrul Özkök, Zaman Editor-in-Chief Ekrem Dumanlı is facing legal action over his allegedly insulting and threatening remarks towards President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in the latest instance of a crackdown on critical members of the media.

On Friday the Bakırköy Chief Public Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation into Dumanlı over accusations of insulting Erdoğan during his remarks on a TV program. The investigation is apparently a continuation of Erdoğan's and the interim Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government's persistent efforts to muzzle critical elements of media outlets.

During the TV broadcast Dumanlı mentioned those who staged a military coup on Sept. 12, 1980, and referenced their violent and cruel implications over the people with different ideologies who faced ill-treatment and torture in prisons designed especially for political prisoners.

In his remarks, Dumanlı expressed that no form of oppression is acceptable and that the public did its part to get rid of the threat even in times of military coups. However, pro-government media spin doctors have accused Dumanlı of threatening Erdoğan in his remarks and over comments that he did not make. In its report, the pro-government Kanal 24 TV station distorted Dumanlı's words and accused him of saying that “Erdoğan will be finished regardless of whether an election is held or not.”

However, Dumanlı neither used Erdoğan's name nor stated anything suggesting overthrowing Erdoğan irrespective of an election; he only mentions the violent implications of the Sept. 12 military coup.

"This country has undergone multiple difficulties and has managed to cope with them. I witnessed the military coup of Sept. 12. I was detained on Sept. 13 in a military prison. I saw that many elderly people were subjected to torture due to their political choices. Even several friends of mine and I were tortured in prison. Thus, there is a perception that evil has descended [like a nightmare] and cannot be evaded. It has to leave [the country] or it is forced to leave. What will happen when [the people's] consciences reject it [the evil]? What about when people have said enough is enough?" Dumanlı commented.

Speaking to the Cihan news agency on Friday regarding both the pro-government media's smear campaign against him over his latest remarks and the investigation into his words, Dumanlı commented: "A certain part of my speech is being distorted by the pro-government media in order to create the perception and manipulate public opinion by using my remarks. But I call those who have a conscience to listen to my speech on Bugün TV. Where is the insult and threat? What is its relation to [Recep] Tayyip Erdoğan?”

Dumanlı also said on his Twitter account, after pro-government media reported that he had insulted Erdoğan, that he was talking about the cruelty perpetrated during the Sept. 12, 1980 military coup, and that his words were distorted.

Columnist Özkök takes long vacation after probe for allegedly insulting Erdoğan

Columnist Ertuğrul Özkök has taken 23 days of vacation after a probe was launched concerning his Thursday column, which allegedly holds President Erdoğan responsible for the death of a Syrian child that same day.

In his column published on Friday in the Hürriyet daily, Özkök denied the claims that he meant to insult Erdoğan in his piece, adding: "I have not lost my sense so as to insult the country's elected President Erdoğan by calling him a 'murderer.' Erdoğan's name is not used in any line of my column."

Özkök underlined, on Friday, that he criticized the efforts to drag Turkey into the Middle East quagmire in his Thursday column and went on to say: "The dictator that I referred to in my column is Assad [Syria's incumbent President Bashar al-Assad], who has aimed at governing the whole of the Middle East according to his fancies. The other which is at the center of my criticism is the Muslim Brotherhood, a group which has taken up arms with the claim of fighting Assad and which tries to form a worse regime then that of Assad. Those who appear in public and define themselves as Muslims are members of ISIL [the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levent]. Even if I never defined Erdoğan as a 'murderer,' I have a responsibility to criticize leaders' politics."

"I have not had a break this summer. I have written on an almost daily basis. And now I am leaving for a vacation that I have long planned and that will include the Feast of the Sacrifice [Eid al-Adha]," Özkök said, concluding his column.

However, the Küçükçekmece Prosecutor's Office, which launched the probe into Özkök's remarks, sent the investigation to the Bakırköy Chief Prosecutor's Office on the grounds that the first court has no authority to carry out such an investigation into Özkök on Friday.

After Özkök's Thursday column, which has been considered by an İstanbul prosecutor as having insulting content towards Erdoğan, the Küçükçekmece Public Prosecutor's Office launched an investigation into Özkök on the charge of insulting the president.

Özkök based the column under question, titled “Shame On You O Great Man,” on the photograph of the tiny body of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, who washed ashore in the Aegean resort of Bodrum, that has been dominating social media.

Özkök accused those who have turned the Middle East into the world's most brutal territory of being the murderers of the Syrian refugee child; however, he did not mention any names.

"O great man, You… You who have turned the Middle East into the world's most brutal territory… You… The dictator who sees the country as his own property… You… The Muslim brother who continues to fight for his own grudge under the guise of fighting against him… You… Black villain who performs every kind of inhuman atrocity, beheading without blinking an eye in the name of serving Islam… And you… Namely the neighbor who does his best to oust the dictator to build his own sculpture [in that country]… You too… Did you see that innocent body lying on the Aegean shore […] Relax your fingers that strained while flashing the Rabia sign […] Look, my friend, you murdered this child […],” Özkök wrote in his Thursday column.

The photograph is of a little boy wearing a bright red T-shirt and shorts lying face-down in the sand on a beach near the resort town of Bodrum.

More than 100 people have recently been charged and some detained after being accused of insulting Erdoğan since he was elected president in August of last year. Anti-government journalists and public figures in particular have been targeted by the police and prosecutors on the grounds that they have insulted Erdoğan. These developments are widely considered a new method of intimidating political opponents who do not share the government's views.

Dozens of people, including journalists Sedef Kabaş, Hidayet Karaca and Mehmet Baransu, high school students, activists and even Merve Büyüksaraç -- a former Miss Turkey, have been prosecuted for insulting Erdoğan on social media such as Twitter and Facebook.

The law that makes insulting the president a criminal offense has become a method of intimidation against people who are vocal in their criticism of Erdoğan.

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)



 
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