Turkey: New postponement in the trial of the representative of Reporters without Borders

Turkish justice today rescheduled the trial of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) representative Erol Onteroglu to February 1, following a defense request that highlighted ties between a juror and the ruling AKP party.

Oderoglou is on trial in an Istanbul court along with two others for “terrorist propaganda” and faces more than 14 years in prison for supporting a pro-Kurdish opposition newspaper, Ozgur Gundem.

Authorities shut down the paper in 2016 during a wave of repression that followed an attempted coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Defense lawyers today called for the disqualification of a juror because of his connection to President Erdogan’s AKP party, saying his presence undermines any prospect of a fair trial.

“We consider it important to have a clean jury, at least on the face of it, in a country where politics clearly interferes with justice,” Erol Onteroglu told AFP after the hearing.

The court suspended the trial pending a decision on the fate of that particular juror.

In May 2016, Oderoglou and 50 other figures had successively taken over, at least symbolically, the editor-in-chief of the endangered Kurdish newspaper.

The articles published at the time served as the basis for a prosecution for “terrorist propaganda”.

After a first trial, which lasted more than three years, the RSF representative and his co-accused were acquitted in July 2019.

However, this decision was canceled in 2020 by the Court of Appeal of Istanbul.

RES-EMP

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