A Turkish court sentenced a journalist from opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet to three years in prison on Tuesday on a charge of spreading terrorist propaganda over a tweet which the paper briefly posted in May.
Oğuz Güven, who bears legal responsibility for the newspaper's Twitter account, was being tried over a tweet reporting the death in a traffic accident of a prosecutor. Prosecutor Mustafa Alper had filed the first indictment against the network of U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen. The tweet described the prosecutor as having been "mowed down" by a truck but was deleted and replaced with another shortly after. Cumhuriyet says the tweet was replaced within one minute by one saying the prosecutor "died awfully in a truck accident".
The court in İstanbul ruled Tuesday that the tweet constituted propaganda on behalf of the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ). The network of Fethullah Gülen referred to as the FETÖ by Ankara, was one of the masterminds of last year's coup attempt.
Güven was found guilty by the court of "making propaganda of FETÖ" and "issuing the statements of the terrorist organization". Güven was given one year 10 months and 15 days for the first charge and one year two months and 17 days for the second charge.
He had been remanded in custody in May but was released in June pending trial.
More than a dozen Cumhuriyet correspondents and executives are being tried in a separate case in which prosecutors say the paper was taken over by the network of Gülen and used to target President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and veil the actions of militant groups.
