Suppression efforts by the ruling AKP against media continue in Turkey. Editors of soL news portal and Boyun Eğme weekly, run by Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), have been sentenced to prison for "insulting" President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
İstanbul Anadolu Second Criminal Court of First Instance gave the Executive Editor of soL news portal Özgür Şen and Chief Editor of the weekly Boyun Eğme newspaper Volkan Algan prison sentences between 1 and 2 years. The sentences were suspended. Özgür Şen and Volkan Algan are also members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Turkey.
In Turkey, it has been almost banned to write a news article criticising Erdoğan. soL news portal's Turkish edition has been sued for many times because of the news about Erdoğan and many of its news have been censored. Prison sentence for criticising Erdoğan is also very common.
Şeyma Pehlivan, the lawyer representing President Erdoğan, claimed that the news and articles in soL and Boyun Eğme included expressions aiming to create a negative sense about Erdoğan and deemed to insult the president.
The reason of the sentence given to Özgür Şen is his article published on January 17, 2016, with the title of "They claim the massacres will stop if Erdoğan becomes president". The article says that the only way to exit from the current chaos in Turkey is rejecting to give Erdoğan what he wants. Volkan Algan was sentenced to prison for a statement published last year by the Communist Party of Turkey.
