Istanbul, August 9, 2023—Turkish authorities should not force Barış Pehlivan to return to prison for allegedly violating his parole in a 2020 case involving his reporting on a Turkish intelligence officer, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.
Pehlivan, a columnist for the pro-opposition daily Cumhuriyet, revealed in an August 2 column that he was ordered to report back to prison no later than August 15 to serve eight months of a 2020 sentence for violating the country’s national intelligence laws.
In March 2020, Turkish authorities arrested Pehlivan, then chief editor of independent news website Odatv, along with five other journalists over their coverage of the death of a Turkish intelligence officer in Libya. Pehlivan and four other journalists were found guilty of violating national intelligence laws in September 2020; that month, Pehlivan was released on parole after having served six months.
“Barış Pehlivan did not deserve to be imprisoned over his reporting three years ago, and he definitely does not deserve to lose eight more months of his life behind bars,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Turkish authorities must stop arresting members of the press and instead provide a safe environment where journalists can do their job without fear of judicial retaliation.”
In the 2020 case, Pehlivan was initially sentenced to three years and nine months in prison; due to Turkish sentencing laws, his term has been reduced so that eight months remain.
In his August 2 column about the order to return to prison, Pehlivan said the authorities considered him in violation of his parole due to separate charges prosecutors filed against him and another journalist in 2022 for allegedly “making targets of those who are tasked to combat terrorism,” an accusation of exposing information that would harm an official.
On Monday, August 7, Pehlivan’s lawyers filed an appeal for him to remain released under judicial control, which would allow him to stay out of prison but would ban him from traveling and require him to report to police, according to news reports.
On Wednesday, CPJ joined 18 other press freedom, freedom of expression, and human rights organizations as signatories of a joint statement urging Turkish authorities not to re-imprison Pehlivan and to stop the “systematic judicial harassment” against journalists.
CPJ emailed the Istanbul chief prosecutor’s office for comment but did not receive any reply. At the time of CPJ’s latest prison census, on December 1, 2022, at least 40 journalists were imprisoned in Turkey.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.
Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director | Radio Free (2023-08-09T16:39:23+00:00) Turkish journalist Barış Pehlivan ordered to return to prison over alleged parole violation. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/09/turkish-journalist-baris-pehlivan-ordered-to-return-to-prison-over-alleged-parole-violation/
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