Turkish Newspaper Editor Faces Five Years in Jail for 'Insulting' President

Turkish newspaper's editor-in-chief Sedat Ergin may face five years imprisonment for a September article, in which the journalist "disrespected" the Turkish president.

ANKARA (Sputnik) — The Turkish public prosecutor's office is seeking a five-year prison sentence for the Hurriyet newspaper's editor-in-chief Sedat Ergin for "insulting" the country's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the newspaper said Friday.

The Hurriyet newspaper said the case against Ergin relates to a September article, which featured remarks allegedly made by Erdogan about an attack by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on a military convoy near the country's Iraqi border that killed 16 Turkish soldiers.

In the article, the newspaper paraphrased Erdogan's remarks as implying that if his Justice and Development Party had not lost its parliamentary majority in the June election the attack would not have happened.

After the article’s publication, around 100 protesters attacked Hurriyet’s office in Istanbul.

Later, the newspaper apologized in a written statement for misreporting the story.

In November, Cumhuriyet newspaper editor-in-chief Can Dundar and the publication’s Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul were arrested on charges of espionage and treason after publishing a report containing images of what the newspaper stated were trucks carrying weapons that were bound for Syria.

In 2013, the Committee to Protect Journalists ranked Turkey as the worst jailer of journalists, with 40 arrests registered in the country.

In 2015, the number of journalist arrests had dropped to 14, however Reporters Without Borders rated the country as 149th out of 180 on its Press Freedom Index.