MEDIA MONITORING DATABASE
Hüseyin Aykol is on trial for “insulting the President of the Republic”
RELATED PERSON OR INSTITUTION
Hüseyin Aykol
CITY
İstanbul
YEAR OF INTERFERENCE
2017
LAST UPDATED
25/06/2019
TYPE OF STATEMENT
Political
MEDIUM
Print Media
Newspaper
THE TITLE OF WHOSE RIGHT IS INTERFERED
Editor / Editor-In-Chief
RIGHTS GUARANTEED UNDER THE RIGHT OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
Right to Impart Information and Ideas
TYPE OF INTERFERENCE
Judicial Interference
Criminal Courts
Sentence to imprisonment
THE LEGAL GROUNDS FOR INTERFERENCE
Turkish Penal Code
Art. 299

Journalists Hüseyin Aykol, the former co-editor-in-chief of the shuttered pro-Kurdish newspaper Özgür Gündem, İnan Kızılkaya, the newspaper’s former managing editor, and Evrensel columnist İhsan Çaralan were convicted of “insulting the President of the Republic” in an article published in Özgür Gündem in 2016 during the editors-in-Chief on Watch campaign in solidarity with Özgür Gündem.

While Aykol and Kızılkaya have been separately sentenced to 1 year, 10 months and 26 days in prison, Çaralan has been ordered a prison sentence of 11 months and 20 days. The court board, which has deferred the pronouncement of the judgement, has not ordered the same ruling for Aykol. Accordingly, the execution of prison sentence Hüseyin Aykol has not been suspended.