{"id":42124,"date":"2019-12-30T02:22:19","date_gmt":"2019-12-30T02:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=42124"},"modified":"2019-12-30T02:22:19","modified_gmt":"2019-12-30T02:22:19","slug":"anxious-gazans-fear-for-the-future-as-daily-life-in-palestine-worsens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=42124","title":{"rendered":"Anxious Gazans fear for the future as daily life in Palestine worsens"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nJEDDAH: Seven people from a Turkish newspaper including six journalists have been convicted of terror-related charges. An Istanbul court convicted the group from S\u00f6zc\u00fc newspaper on Friday, handing down prison terms of two years or more.
The charges relate to a failed coup attempt in 2016 to oust the Turkish government and remove President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Ankara blamed the coup attempt on Fethullah G\u00fclen, a Turkish preacher who has lived in self-imposed exile in the US since 1999.
The seven individuals were convicted of helping the coup perpetrators through their reporting.
Columnists Emin Colasan and Necati Dogru were handed down sentences of three years and six months. The paper\u2019s chief editor Metin Yilmaz and its online edition\u2019s managing editor, Mustafa Cetin, were given three years. Online news editor Yucel Ari, financial manager Yonca Yucelan and journalist Gokmen Ulu were sentenced to two years each.
They will appeal the verdict and have denied the charges against them. S\u00f6zc\u00fc denounced the verdict as a \u201cblack stain.\u201d
Turkey is ranked the second highest jailer of journalists in the world according to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Currently 108 journalists are incarcerated in Turkey, where the media industry is either controlled directly by the government or by conglomerates which are dependent on government contracts and therefore back the state\u2019s position.
\u201cTurkey\u2019s daily S\u00f6zc\u00fc is and always has been openly critical of the group which the journalists were found guilty of helping,\u201d Ozgur Ogret, the CPJ\u2019s Turkey representative, told Arab News. \u201cThis trial has always been an absurd one from the very beginning by that fact alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\nHIGHLIGHT<\/span><\/strong>
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\nThe seven individuals were convicted of helping the coup perpetrators through their reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\nDozens of media outlets were shut down following the coup attempt and, as many newspapers depend on advertising revenue that the Press Advertising Agency allocates from state resources, there emerged another trigger for self-censorship and restrictions on the space for independent journalism.
S\u00f6zc\u00fc is a staunch opposition of the domestic and foreign policies of Erdogan\u2019s ruling Justice and Development Party\u2019s (AKP), enraging pro-government circles through critical headlines especially those regarding the president.
Colasan recently criticized Erdogan over his decision to send troops to Libya\u2019s Government of National Accord, asking how could the president speak so irresponsibly, while Dogru has written about government corruption.
The newspaper also disclosed where Erdogan was on the day of the coup attempt, infuriating pro-Ankara figures who said the president had been made into a target.
\u201cTurkish authorities have tried and imprisoned many journalists since the failed coup attempt of 2016 with highly questionable evidence of links to G\u00fclen and his network, like in the Cumhuriyet trial,\u201d said Ogret. \u201cThe guilty verdict of the S\u00f6zc\u00fc trial is the latest example of this misguided approach.\u201d
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who leads the main opposition CHP, also condemned the verdict. \u201cIt is a decision made upon the instruction of the political authority,\u201d he told Arab News. \u201cThey cannot tolerate that S\u00f6zc\u00fc enlightens Turkey and says the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JEDDAH: Seven people from a Turkish newspaper including six journalists have been convicted of terror-related charges. An Istanbul court convicted the group from S\u00f6zc\u00fc newspaper on Friday, handing down prison terms of two years or more.The charges relate to a failed coup attempt in 2016 to oust the Turkish government and remove President Recep Tayyip…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":42125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}