‘Perception Operation’ Lawsuit Against Daily BirGün

Click to read the article in Turkish

A lawsuit has been filed against İbrahim Varlı, Barış İnce, Can Uğur and Bülent Yılmaz from the daily BirGün for having reported on the tweets posted from the "Fuat Avni" account in 2016.

Prepared by İstanbul Deputy Chief Public Prosecutor Murat Çağlak, the bill of indictment has been accepted by the İstanbul 32nd Heavy Penal Court. The terrorist organization indicated in the bill of indictment is the "Fethullahist Terrorist Organization/Parallel State Structure" (FETÖ/PDY)".

Accordingly, four journalists and former BirGün executives have been charged with "knowingly and willingly aiding a terrorist organization as non-members" as per the Article 5/1 of the Anti-Terror Law (TMK).

In the evidence section of the indictment, social media posts shared from the account "Fuat Avni", which was charged with propagandizing for the FETÖ, which is held responsible for the coup attempt in 2016, have been cited.

'They made news in favor of the organization'

The indictment has alleged that by covering the tweets of "Fuat Avni", the daily contributed to the perception operation of the organization.

The indictment has also put forward that Aydın, İnce, Uğur and Yılmaz are not members of the FETÖ or have any links to it, they do not use ByLock, an encrypted communication system allegedly used among FETÖ members, and they do not have money transactions with the organization.

In its conclusion part, the indictment has indicated, "It has been understood that the suspects have no hierarchical connections with the organization and they made several news in favor of the organization in the past."

'Our line of publication has not changed'

The indictment has also featured the depositions of BirGün executives at the prosecutor's office. In their depositions, the journalists said:

"In those years, the owner of the fuatavni account was not known. However, whatever was said on the account turned out to be true a few days later. We thought that it was someone who was leaking information out of internal feuds. It was even said that it could be a relative of a Minister or Erdoğan.

"We referred to the account as a social media hype not as a compliment. We used this expression to mean that it had a large number of followers. We reported this without any comments and because it attracted public attention.

"The struggle that we wage against the Fethullahist group called FETÖ is in our archives; our headlines and articles are obvious. There has been no change in our line of publication." (AS/SD)