The İstanbul Bar Association’s executive board was dismissed Friday on grounds of disseminating “terrorist propaganda” and “publicly spreading false information”, according to a court ruling published online by a lawyers’ association, Agence France-Presse reported,
Prosecutors had filed suit on January 15 several weeks after the İstanbul Bar Association demanded an investigation into the death of two journalists from Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast who were killed in northern Syria.
Nazım Daştan and Cihan Bilgin died on December 19 when their car was hit by what the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said was a “Turkish drone strike.” It happened during clashes between a Turkey-backed militia and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed group spearheaded by Kurdish fighters.
Turkey considers the SDF a terrorist group tied to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The pair worked for Syrian Kurdish media outlets, and the strike was denounced by the Turkish Journalists’ Union.
The Turkish military insists it never targets civilians but only terrorist groups.
At the time the bar association issued a statement saying, “Targeting members of the press in conflict zones is a violation of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions.”
It demanded that “a proper investigation be conducted into the murder of two of our citizens.”
Prosecutors immediately opened an inquiry into allegations of “spreading propaganda for a terrorist organization” and “publicly spreading false information” on the grounds the two journalists had ties to the PKK.
The İstanbul Bar Association denounced the case as having “no legal basis” and said its executive council was “fulfilling its duties and responsibilities in line with the constitution, democracy and the law.”
