On 11 December 2018, the Istanbul 37th High Criminal Court convicted Ece Sevim Öztürk, the editor-in-chief of the Çağdaş Ses website which provided news from CHP backstages, for aiding a terrorist organization (FETÖ) and sentenced her to 3 years and 1 month and 15 days of imprisonment. The journalist was released with the decision.
The journalist was taken into custody on June 5, upon the complaint filed by Turkish Naval Forces and was arrested on June 20, 2018 after 13 days of detention. She was kept in solitary confinement at Bakırköy Women Prison, due to “for security reasons”. Lately, Öztürk was reporting on the investigation regarding the July 15.
The Court of Cassation overturned the prison sentence given to journalist Ece Sevim Öztürk. In the decision of overturning, the 3rd Penal Chamber of the Court of Cassation wrote that “penalizing the defendants based on a possibility, albeit based on a high possibility, would not lead to the truth, which was the most important aim of a prosecution.” Öztürk’s lawyer Efkan Bolaç had taken the file to the Court of Cassation (December 10).