Journalists Mavioğlu and Soykan at Court

The article entitled "One Document, three scenarios" published on 19 June  2009 is the bone of contention in a trial against journalist Ertuğrul Mavioğlu, former reporter of Radikal newspaper, and Timur Soykan, editor of the nation-wide daily.

At the Monday hearing (2 May) before the Bakırköy 2^nd Criminal Court of First Instance, journalists Mavioğlu and Soykan presented their defence. They stand accused of "violating confidentiality" related to the Ergenekon trial they were reporting about in the article on subject. Ergenekon is a clandestine ultra-nationalist terrorist organization charged with plotting to overthrow the government. Radikal executive Hasan Çakkalkurt did not attend yesterday's hearing.

Mavioğlu:  The file was not part of the investigation back then

Mavioğlu claimed in his defence that the allegations were out of the question because the file was not part of the investigation by the time the article had been published. He pointed out that Taraf was one of many newspapers that reported about the file.

Also charges of "identifying a person as a target" are being pressed against the journalist based on a photograph that was included in the news. It featured hundreds of soldiers photographed from a considerable distance. Mavioğlu stated that it was "out of mind indeed" to assess the picture in this way.

"If this picture targets anybody, journalists should not put any pictures at all"

"If this photograph became the reason of a trial, we should not do any journalism anymore and we should not put any pictures in the newspapers", Mavioğlu said. He indicated that many people voiced their opinions on the issue of the "original signature" under an important document, including people like the President and the Prime Minister. Thus, Mavioğlu wondered why he was the only one in the dock.

"Everybody talked about it but I won the lottery. If this is not correct, I would appreciate the President and the Prime Minister to be prosecuted in this very courtroom".

Soykan: Analysis rather than news

Soykan said in his defence, "While everybody was giving his/her opinion on the matter, we said let's depict three probable scenarios. This was much more an analysis rather than a news item. We have done a journalistic work with the aim to provide certain scenarios to our readers that they could evaluate themselves".

Court judge Rüveyde Çakmak Kaner decided to adjourn the trial to 22 September.

After the hearing, Ercan İpekçi made a statement on behalf of the Freedom for Journalists Platform (GÖP) that supports the journalists on trial. "We estimated the number of this sort of trials in Turkey at around 2,000. Yet, today we learned that there are approximately up to 10,000 such cases. Instead of amending laws, journalists are being given the order for self-censorship", İpekçi criticized. (EÇ/EÖ/VK)

* The allegations of "identifying a person as a target" are based on this is the picture published together with the news in the Radikal daily on 19 June 2009.