A Turkish court has sentenced journalist Ahmet Erkan Yiğitsözlü to six years, three months in prison for alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, Bold Medya reported.
The Osmaniye 2nd High Criminal Court sentenced Yiğitsözlü based on the allegation that he was using the Signal messaging app to communicate with the movement’s members. During the hearing Yiğitsözlü said he was merely a journalist and urged the court to acquit him.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since the corruption investigations of 2013, which implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan, his family members and his inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began targeting its members. He intensified the crackdown on the movement following an abortive putsch in 2016, which he accused Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Following the verdict, Yiğitsözlü criticized the decision on X. “One of the so-called pieces of evidence used against me was SIGNAL,” Yiğitsözlü wrote on X. “While we have European Court of Human Rights rulings saying that ByLock is not proof of a crime, this court used Signal as evidence and sentenced me to 6 years and 3 months.”
Yiğitsözlü, who had been detained on November 15, 2022 and released two days later pending trial, faced charges of “membership in an armed terrorist organization” and “violating the law on the prevention of financing of terrorism.”
Yiğitsözlü is an editor for KHK TV, a media outlet that covers the stories of people who were dismissed from their jobs by government decrees in the aftermath of the coup attempt in 2016. Yiğitsözlü was also fired through a government decree from his job at the state-run Anadolu news agency (AA) over alleged links to the movement.
Following the abortive putsch, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency and carried out a massive purge of state institutions on the pretext of an anti-coup fight. Over 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors, as well as 29,444 members of the armed forces were summarily removed from their jobs for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations” by emergency decree-laws subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny.
Former public servants were not only fired from their jobs; they were also banned from working again in the public sector and getting a passport. The government also made it difficult for them to work formally in the private sector. Notes were put on the social security database about dismissed public servants to deter potential employers.
