Jailed journalist Tunca Öğreten gets married in prison

Diken news website's jailed editor Tunca Öğreten got married with his fiancee in Silivri Prison on Wednesday.

Diken news website editor Tunca Öğreten, who was arrested in Jan. 17 for publishing stories on the leaked emails of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s son-in-law and Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, got married with his fiancee in Silivri Prison on Wednesday.

Öğreten recently had written a letter to his fiancee Minez Bayülgen to propose her to marry him.

“From captivity to freedom, from autocracy to democracy, do you accept to be my wife? Will you marry me Minez Bayülgen?” he wrote.

Öğreten was first detained in December 25 along with other six journalists and later arrested on Jan. 17 in the same case in which German Die Welt daily reporter Deniz Yücel got arrested by a court on Monday.

Öğreten’s lawyer Sema Özdemir told Birgün daily that she and a prison guard was witnesses during the marriage at the Silivri Prison on Wednesday.

Özdemir quoted Öğreten saying during the marriage that the “yes” to marry Bayülgen is the only “yes” he would say until April 16 referendum when Turkey will vote for a constitutional package which will increase President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan‘s powers and switch Turkey to an executive presidency.

Stockholm Center for Freedom, an advocacy group that monitors rights violations in Turkey, issued a report on Wednesday, saying that the number of jailed journalist has reached to a new record of 200 with Germany’s Die Welt, Deniz Yücel being among new arrestees.

Of these journalists, 179 are arrested pending trial and without a conviction. Most of the journalists do not even know what the charges are or what evidence, if any, the government has because the indictments were not filed yet. (SCF with turkishminute.com) March 2, 2017

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