According to Hurriyet Daily News, an Istanbul prosecutor has demanded up to nine years in jail for prominent Turkish journalist Hasan Cemal on charges of “making terror propaganda” in one of his articles.
Cemal stood trial on Jan. 12, charged with “making the propaganda of terrorist organizations” and “praising crime and criminals” in a July 11, 2016 column titled “Fehman Hüseyin.”
The court ruled to postpone the trial after Cemal said in his testimony that he would simply repeat the testimony he has already given to the prosecutor.
In that testimony, Cemal had said it was a journalist’s job to possibly meet a terrorist leader one day and a prime minister the next.
“I have been interested in the Kurdish issue and the [outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party] PKK since 1980. I have written many columns and four books about this issue. No investigation has been opened on claims of making terrorism propaganda against any of my columns or books until today,” he stated.
“A journalist may meet a terrorist leader who has pulled a gun on the state one day and then meet a prime minister the next day. These are the discrepancies and ironies of journalism,” he added.
Hasan Cemal is a Turkish journalist, writer, and the grandson of Djemal Pasha. He was the editor of Cumhuriyet from 1981 to 1992, and of Sabah from 1992 to 1998. In 2013 he resigned from the Milliyet newspaper after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had criticised his article supporting Milliyet’s publication of minutes of a parliamentary visit to Abdullah Öcalan, and Milliyet suspended him and refused to publish his returning column.
He is known for acknowledging and apologizing for the Armenian Genocide, a crime which was perpetrated in part by his grandfather. His 2012 book on the subject (written in response to the 2007 assassination of his friend Hrant Dink) is titled 1915: Armenian Genocide).
