Sat for about 13 months Deniz Yücel in custody without charge in Turkey, he was released in February 2018. The case for the Turkish judiciary has not yet been settled. In parallel to Yücel’s departure to Germany, charges were brought against him, including for terrorist propaganda. In the ongoing trial, the Turkish public prosecutor has now requested a prison sentence of up to 16 years. The lawyer of the former Turkey correspondent for the newspaper “Die Welt”, Veysel Ok, said in court.
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The prosecutor had not read his plea out loud, but had previously submitted it in writing. Yücel was not present. Ok asked for more time for defense. The process is now scheduled to continue on April 2nd.
The prosecutor demanded punishment for propaganda for the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and sedition. “Both are illegal,” said Ok. For it give a judgment of the constitutional court, according to which the content of Yücel’s articles was within the scope of press freedom. “Either he didn’t read it or he ignored it,” said Ok. The articles Yücel wrote as a Turkey correspondent were a central point in the indictment.
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Regarding the charge, for the movement of the Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen The prosecutor demanded acquittal for having carried out propaganda. He also demands punishment for insulting the president.
The case had weighed heavily on German-Turkish relations. The prosecutor charged the journalist with terrorist propaganda and incitement in his indictment. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Yücel an “agent terrorist”. The reporter was held in a high security prison west of Istanbul from February 2017 to February 2018.
In 2017, a whole series of arrests of German citizens for “political reasons” led to a deep crisis between Berlin and Ankara. Yücel was probably the most prominent case.
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