Journalist Deniz Yücel says court sentenced him to 'intimidate all foreign reporters'

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Deniz Yücel, the former Turkey representative of Germany's Die Welt newspaper, was acquitted of "inciting people into hatred and animosity" but sentenced to 2 years, 9 months and 22 days in prison for "terrorist propaganda" on July 16.

Speaking to bianet, he recalled the Constitutional Court decision of "rights violation" regarding his trial and said the last week's decision by İstanbul 32nd Heavy Penal Court was illegal.

Saying that the lower courts "don't have the luxury of not abiding by the Constitutional Court decisions," Yücel asserted that the sentence given to him was to "intimidate all foreign journalists."

Residing in Germany, he noted that the court's verdict was in fact a "travel warning" against him.

Yücel, who holds dual citizenship of Turkey and Germany, spent more than one year behind bars in Turkey before being released in February 2018.

It was "absurd" that the court both acquitted him and requested a new investigation against him over the same articles he wrote while the prosecutor's office appealed his acquittal of "inciting people into hatred and animosity," the journalist said.

"Constitutional Court decision was ignored"

"First of all, the court's decision is illegal. It's a decision against the Constitution. Because, while looking at whether my arrest is legal, the Constitutional Court also examined my interviews, column articles and news reports that were the reason for my arrest. In doing so, it corrected many translation errors in the previous prosecutor's indictment and recorded them in trial minutes one by one.

"For example, regarding my interview with Cemil Bayık [one of the leaders of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)], it gave a ruling in detail as to when an interview with a terror suspect is included in the scope of 'propaganda' and when it is 'informing the public.'

"In other words, it examined my work and said, 'There is journalism here.' It said, 'There is not the slightest indication that the crime of propagandizing for a terrorist organization has been committed' and reached the same conclusion for all my articles with no exceptions after a detailed analysis. It not only determined that my arrest [was illegal], but also gave an important decision in favor of freedom of the press.

"Maybe there was a political background of this decision, it was related to the political conjuncture of those days, namely June 2019. Whatever, it was a good verdict."

"The heavy penal court has clearly committed a crime"

"But now we look at the prosecutor's opinion and there is not a single sentence about the Constitutional Court decision. We look at the verdict the 32nd Heavy Penal Court has given and it acts like the Constitutional Court decision doesn't exist. This is a really dire situation.

"The 32nd Heavy Penal Court has clearly committed a crime, it has violated the Constitution. I am not a lawyer, I am a journalist. I know this but don't the heavy penal court judges do?

"Constitutional Courts are indispensable for states of law. There is a hierarchy among courts and the Constitutional Court is the highest court. The lower court doesn't have the luxury to not abide by the Constitutional Court decision."

Was it a political verdict?

"How do they dare to do this? This means that there is something they rely on. I don't know whether an instruction was directly received or not. As I don't know about it, I can't claim it was. But in my process, I know how the same court acted on instructions.

"Erdoğan [Recep Tayyip, the President], spoke with Germany's Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel. Germany's Consulate General informed me that I would be released in exchange for leaving Turkey silently.

"The preparation of my indictment took one year. When this offer was made, the indictment was released. At that point, one of my attorneys asked, 'Mr. judge, the indictment has been released. What will happen, are you going to accept it?' at Çağlayan [courthouse]. The judge replied, 'I don't know either. I'm waiting for instructions.'

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"So, with these examples, it's pretty difficult to think that this verdict was legal and given by an independent court. We already had many unlawful arrests in Turkey. Şahin Alpay, Mehmet Altan, Osman Kavala, Selahattin Demirtaş... There are a lot of similar situations.

"Considering all these, it's not hard to guess that the court didn't give a judgment on its own."

The request for a new investigation

Yücel said that the court would also file a criminal complaint regarding the written defense statement he submitted in Germany and requested an investigation to be opened into the articles upon Turkish Penal Code Article 301 on insulting the state and state officials.

"This is a violation of right as well. The defense of the defendant is inviolable. The defendant's bar should be untouchable like a rostrum in the parliament. But unfortunately, neither of them are inviolable in Turkey.

"There is such an absurd situation. The same court both acquits me over the same articles and requests a new investigation to be opened. The prosecutor requests punishment, appealing the decision regarding the 'inciting people into hatred and animosity charge,' for which I was acquitted.

"I didn't write these articles in something published in Turkey, in Turkish. I wrote them in a newspaper in Germany, published in German.

"The verdict announced by the 32nd Heavy Penal Court but probably was given somewhere else is actually a warning. It's a kind of travel warning the state of Turkey presented to the world.

"Opening an investigation because of articles that can't be elements of a crime is a threat against all journalists. This means, 'We can put you on trial here because of an article that is published in Germany, France, the US."

The prosecutor's appeal

Public Prosecutor İkram Coşkun lodged an appeal against Yücel's acquittal of "inciting people into hatred and animosity." He considered the expression "the genocide against Armenians" and a joke titled, "Without being able to see the Kurd's mother," in two different articles published in Die Welt in 2016 as crime evidence.

In the article published on October 26, 2016, he wrote: "Among the Kurds, the most well-known joke that maybe describes the Turkish state's attitude towards the Kurds the best is: A Turk and a Kurd are sentenced to death. They as the Kurd, 'What is your last wish? The Kurd thinks for a short time and says, 'I love my mommy. I want to see her one more time before passing away from this world.' When the same question is asked to the Turk, the Turk says without hesitation that 'The Kurd's death without being able to see his mother'."

The court also decided that a criminal complaint shall be filed against Yücel for the two articles upon Turkish Penal Code Article 301 on insulting the state.

(HA/VK)