A Turkish judge ordered four staff from the opposition Cumhuriyet ("Republic") newspaper to remain in jail during their trial, accused of supporting the organisers of last year's failed coup.
Editor in chief Murat Sabuncu, attorney Akın Atalay, correspondent Ahmet Şık and accountant Emre Iper were ordered to be jailed until the next session of their trial on March 9.
Earlier in the hearing, the judge ordered Ahmet Şık to be removed from court after he sharply criticised the government during the trial. Şık, who has now been in prison for 360 days, was ordered out of the court by the judge because of his "political" defence statement.
"Around 8 percent of the whole population is under suspicion according to the data provided by the president of the court of cassation. This is quite a high ratio. If there are around 7 million suspects in Turkey as suggested by the president of the court of cassation, it means that 15 percent of the whole population is under suspicion. In other words, one out of every seven people is under suspicion," Şık said.
Noting that the rule of Turkey's AKP government is dictatorial, Şık said "the government is strengthening its perversity through violence. The AKP rule deems anyone who opposes its rule a terrorist." There is a judiciary controlled by the government that is translating this 'terrorist' term into preposterous accusations," Şık told the court.
During the fraught hearing, Judge Abdurrahman Orkun Dağ would not allow Şık to continue and ordered his removal. "That's enough! If you want to play politics, become a member of parliament... I cannot allow him to defend himself like this. Take the defendant outside!" Dağ said.
After he was ordered out, Şık said the case itself was political. "The days will come where you will be tried, do not forget this. I hope you won't be tried in a court like yours," he said.
Şık is the author of a much-debated 2011 book called "The Imam's Army" which exposed how the network of the U.S. based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen infiltrated the Turkish bureaucracy and built ties with the ruling AKP party.
When Şık was not allowed to plea, other defendants Murat Sabuncu and Akın Atalay also desisted from making the plea. The court judged jailed pending trial for the defendants. The court has been adjourned to March 9, 2018.
Prosecutors say Cumhuriyet was effectively taken over by the network of U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, one of the masterminds of last year's coup attempt.
The 17 current and former Cumhuriyet employees are charged with supporting through their coverage three organisations Turkey views as terror groups -- armed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), leftist Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), and the Gülen network. They face up to 43 years in prison if convicted. If convicted, they face varying terms of up to 43 years in jail. On July 28, İstanbul court freed seven of the newspaper's staff after 271 days, including cartoonist Musa Kart, Bülent Utku, Turan Günay, Önder Çelik, Kemal Güngör, Hakan Karasinir and Güray Öz.
