On November 26, the Istanbul 26th High Criminal Court sentenced Fatih Altayl\u0131, a well-known journalist in Turkey, to 4 years and 2 months in prison. He was charged with threatening the President of the Republic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What Led to the Charge<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The case started after Altayl\u0131’s comments on his YouTube channel on June 20. He mentioned historical events, stating, “This nation is a nation that strangled its sultan\u2026 Ottoman sultans who were killed, victims of conspiracy, or strangled.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prosecutors, with President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan as the complaining party, created an indictment based on a section of the Turkish Penal Code about threats that imply physical assault against the President. This led the court to consider a minimum sentence of five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Altayl\u0131’s Side of the Story<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Altayl\u0131 defended himself by saying that his words were not a serious threat to the President. “Why would the President fear me? I am not part of any organization, and I have not used violence,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He added that President Erdo\u011fan is strong, pointing out that he stood up and came to Istanbul during the July 15 coup attempt and didn’t fear Mossad when arguing with Israel. Altayl\u0131 said the President is not easily scared and that the Presidential Protection Department confirmed that his comments did not change the President’s schedule, which shows they were not taken seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Court’s Decision and the Reaction<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The court gave Altayl\u0131 a sentence of 4 years and 2 months (reduced from five years because of good conduct) and said he would remain in detention due to a flight risk. Altayl\u0131 has been detained for 158 days. He reacted to the decision by throwing his papers in the air as he left the courtroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Erin\u00e7 Sa\u011fkan, the President of the Turkey Bar Association (TBB) and Altayl\u0131’s lawyer, strongly disagreed with the verdict. Sa\u011fkan said the most worrying part was the court treating comments made on a YouTube broadcast as a physical attack. Sa\u011fkan also criticized keeping Altayl\u0131 in detention because of a supposed flight risk, calling it an act of intimidation against the entire press and a tool of pressure on all dissenting voices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trial was held in a special courtroom to accommodate the large number of attendees, including journalists, writers, and members of parliament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On November 26, the Istanbul 26th High Criminal Court sentenced Fatih Altayl\u0131, a well-known journalist in Turkey, to 4 years and 2 months in prison. He was charged with threatening the President of the Republic. What Led to the Charge The case started after Altayl\u0131’s comments on his YouTube channel on June 20. He mentioned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":31258,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1047],"class_list":["post-31257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-feed","tag-editor"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31257"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31259,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31257\/revisions\/31259"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}