Minister of Justice Bekir Bozdağ
Milli Müdafaa Caddesi No: 22
Bakanlıklar
06659, Kızılay
Ankara, Turkey
PEN Guatemala is deeply concerned by the growing campaign of judicial harassment faced by writer, journalist and documentary filmmaker Can Dündar. Dündar, who was recently appointed as the new editor-in-chief of the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet,
was questioned today on suspicion of presidential defamation; an
offence which carries a sentence of up to four years and eight months in
prison under the Turkish Penal Code. The criminal investigation comes
after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan submitted an
official complaint about an interview conducted by Dündar with one of
the prosecutors who led a December 2013 investigation into alleged
corruption amongst Erdoğan’s inner circle.
We call on the Turkish authorities to decriminalise defamation including against the president, and to drop the cases against Can Dündar;
Our
organization remind them that the limits of acceptable criticism of
politicians and senior public officials are wider than for private
individuals, as has been determined repeatedly in international law such
as in the case of Tuşalp v Turkey before the European Court of Human
Rights;
Finally,
we remind them that Turkey has the obligation to respect the right to
freedom of expression under the European Convention on Human Rights
(ECHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR), to which it is a state party.
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