MEDIA MONITORING DATABASE
Trial in which Mezopotamya News Agency Reporter Barış Polat is being tried for “membership in a terrorist organisation”
RELATED PERSON OR INSTITUTION
Barış Polat
CITY
Gaziantep
YEAR OF INTERFERENCE
2018
LAST UPDATED
07/01/2020
TYPE OF STATEMENT
Political
MEDIUM
Internet
Social Media Account
THE TITLE OF WHOSE RIGHT IS INTERFERED
Journalist
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. 314/2

Mezopotamya Agency reporter Barış Polat was taken into custody and arrested while distributing Özgürlükçü Demokrasi newspaper closed by a Statutory Decree. He was charged with “membership in a terrorist organization” on the grounds of his social media posts, calling his friends as “heval” (in Kurdish, it means ‘friend’) and having the old issues of the newspaper that he distributed in his house. Polat has been sentenced to 6 years and 3 months of imprisonment.