CHP MP Utku Çakırözer: Six Journalists in Isolation in Silivri Prison

Click to read the article in Turkish

Main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) Eskişehir MP and former journalist Utku Çakırözer visited six journalists arrested over the last two weeks in Silivri Prison in İstanbul yesterday (March 11).

Çakırözer met Barış Pehlivan, Barış Terkoğlu and Hülya Kılınç from Odatv news website, Murat Ağırel from daily Yeni Çağ and Aydın Keser and Ferhat Çelik from Yeni Yaşam newspaper.

"All press laborers should be released immediately", Utku Çakırözer said following his visit and underlined that "if the way to do this is through courts, then their indictments should be completed and it should be ensured that they stand before the court as soon as possible."

Referring to the isolation of the journalists, he has said, "Keeping them in a cell, isolating them is a method of punishment in itself. I am calling on the prison administration and the Ministry of Justice to end this practice."

Çakırözer also shared the remarks of arrested journalists with the public.

They are on their own

* Though Odatv executives Barış Terkoğlu and Barış Pehlivan submitted a petition, they cannot stay in the same ward. Both of them are isolated in three-person cells. They did not experience such isolation when they had been arrested for 19 months as part of Ergenekon cases.

* Yeni Yaşam executives Aydın Keser and Ferhat Çelik are also kept in solitary confinement in cells. Yeni Çağ columnist Murat Ağırel and Odatv reporter Hülya Kılınç also stay on their own.

Pehlivan: It is like we are in our book

* The thing is that they want to prevent the news that we did and will make and the books that we will pen. I feel like I am in the book "Metastaz" that we co-penned with Barış Terkoğlu. Just as we wrote, we will get back on our feet and we are indebted to this Republic.

* What needs to be done is to prepare the indictment as soon as possible and we stand before the court. This bill of indictment is completed in a day if wanted. This indictment needs to be prepared and a ruling of acquittal and freedom needs to be given for us by the court without keeping Turkey in this shame of democracy any longer.

Terkoğlu: An operation of revenge

* What we are going through now is not about our news. An operation of revenge is being carried out. Just as no one believed you while we were writing about what the FETÖ did 10 years ago, but our arrests led to the revelation of the activities of that organization... Similarly, other structures that no one wants to believe have now been nested within the state.

* There is a news which is a matter in dispute in this case, the news to be reported is clear. The indictment should be prepared as soon as possible so that we can prove our innocence before the court and be finally free.

Ağırel: They try to create social chaos

* They took my posts about the martyred National Intelligence Organization (MİT) members as an opportunity, but they cannot make anyone accept this. I quite clearly see the aims of the ones who made the judiciary to give these unlawful verdicts, they are trying to create social chaos.

* I will keep holding my head high and honorable in Silivri jail as well. I will get out of here with my head high in one way or another.

Keser and Çelik: First release, then arrest

* We cannot understand why we have been arrested. It was not even written in our news that the soldiers who lost their lives were MİT members. They are just referred to as soldiers. We were first released, then arrested. That was what we were surprised about.

* On the one side, Odatv; on the one side, Yeniçağ; on the side, the free press of Turkey... We cannot get if they try to bring them all together.

Çakırözer: Journalists should be released

* What is done to these journalists is a shame, it is a cruelty, it is unlawfulness. It is clear that the issue here is well beyond the funeral of a MİT official, but it is a matter of intimidating, silencing and frightening the journalists. They should be released immediately.

* If the way to do this is through courts, then their indictments should be completed and it should be ensured that they stand before the court as soon as possible. (HA/SD)