Turkish authorities on Wednesday arrested a lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) after a court handed him a 25-year jail sentence for giving material about the illegal weapon shipment to jihadist in Syria.
CHP lawmaker Enis Berberoğlu had not been detained during his trial but after the verdict was announced he was immediately placed under arrest.
Berberoğlu, guilty of the charge "for political or military espionage" regarding government arms-smuggling to jihadists in Syria.
Berberoğlu was accused of providing Cumhuriyet newspaper with a video purporting to show Turkey's intelligence agency trucking weapons into Syria.
A report in Cumhuriyet newspaper in May 2015 said that trucks owned by Turkey's state intelligence service were found to contain weapons and ammunition that were headed for Syria when they were stopped and searched in southern Turkey in early 2014.
A screen grab from a video published on the website of the Turkish Cumhuriyet daily on May 29, 2015 shows mortar shells in boxes intercepted on a truck destined for Syria.
The court decision came after President Erdoğan's confessions that without Turkey and Qatar, Syrian opposition would inevitably collapse.
