{"id":1918,"date":"2016-02-29T08:47:15","date_gmt":"2016-02-29T08:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1918"},"modified":"2016-02-29T08:47:15","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T08:47:15","slug":"turkeys-president-erdogan-rejects-court-ruling-to-free-journalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1918","title":{"rendered":"Turkey’s president Erdogan rejects court ruling to free journalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

By LAURA PITEL
\nThe Independent<\/em><\/p>\n

Can Dundar and Erdem Gul left prison on Friday after the Constitutional Court ruled that their rights had been violated<\/strong><\/p>\n

Turkey\u2019s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that he has \u201cno respect\u201d for and would \u201cnot abide\u201d by a court ruling that two prominent journalists were unfairly jailed.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A court ruled Can Dundar, right, and Erdem Gul and been unfairly jailed AP<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet newspaper, Can Dundar, and its Ankara bureau chief, Erdem Gul, were detained in November accused of revealing state secrets and attempting to overthrow the government after publishing claims that Turkey tried to deliver weapons to Islamist rebels in Syria.<\/p>\n

The pair left prison on Friday after the Constitutional Court ruled that their rights had been violated. They still face trial on the charges, with prosecutors demanding that they be jailed for life.<\/p>\n

In comments that will exacerbate international alarm about the rule of law in Turkey, President Erdogan severely criticised the court\u2019s decision and suggested that he would not allow it to stand. \u201cI keep my silence on the decision of the Constitutional Court but I do not abide by the decision or respect it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe media should not have unlimited freedom. There is no absolute freedom anywhere in world media either.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that there was no link between the case and the issue of freedom of expression, describing it instead as an \u201cespionage case\u201d.<\/p>\n

Opposition parties severely criticised his remarks. Ozgur Ozel, an MP with the Republican People\u2019s Party, accused the president of giving a \u201cdirect order\u201d to those considering an appeal against the decision. \u201cThe statement is beyond advice, it is an instruction,\u201d he told Hurriyet.<\/p>\n

Mr Erdogan has had several run-ins with the Constitutional Court, including in 2014 when it overturned bans on Twitter and YouTube.<\/p>\n

The president has been accused by critics of taking an increasingly authoritarian turn in recent years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By LAURA PITEL The Independent Can Dundar and Erdem Gul left prison on Friday after the Constitutional Court ruled that their rights had been violated [more >>>]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1919,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","category-turkey-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1920,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1918\/revisions\/1920"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}