Turkish Students in Court: Forgive me, I have tweeted / Turkey Breaking News
They study, they demonstrate tweet it – now they face three years in prison. In Izmir are 29 young Turks in court because they should have called for protests in the network.
The cap pulled face sitting Emrah G. , 28, outside the courtroom in the Turkish city of Izmir. The student waits for the hearing in which it comes to his future. He nervously tapped around on his smartphone. With that phone he should sent messages on Twitter last summer, according to the indictment and inciting others to break the law – up to three years in prison if convicted he faces .
It is the second day of the trial in a case that shows once again what consequences it may have in Turkey , to speak his mind . It was not until the Easter weekend two critical of the government Twitter accounts were blocked . The end of March , access to Twitter was completely blocked , YouTube can not still call .
As a “plague” of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called Twitter in the summer. Again and again he has shown how little he thinks of the Internet. In the indictment, the Turkish Prime Minister is listed as “injured ” . In addition to Emrah 28 more people have to answer in court to protest in Izmir sedition . Some are said to have insulted the Turkish Prime Minister . Most of the defendants are under thirty years of age and students.
Turkey Students In Court:”We resist,” she tweeted
How exactly Emrah to have the Prime Minister harmed, he does not know . He studied electrical engineering at the Ege University in Izmir and works as a DJ. Emrah has participated in summer Gezi protests and tweeted about it , he shared phone numbers of lawyers and doctors. In one of his messages he asks for support because a teenager was injured by rubber bullets . That he must act now to stand trial , to drop him just two words below: ” Surprised ” and he was “sad” .
Even the arrest in the summer had breached the law , says lawyer Hande Atay , who represents some of the defendants. Some students had been detained for up to 35 hours, 24 hours are allowed in the rule. Emrah put straight in the resort of Cesme, as a DJ , as the police stood in front of his apartment. When she did not encountered it , they ordered him via letter to police headquarters .
The accused also Özgün E. had not been so lucky. The 26 -year-old studied media in Izmir and is accused of tweets like: ” . . , We resist under the rain on , Izmir , comes to Gündogu ( place in Izmir – ‘s note) ” Seven police officers were suddenly in the evening outside his front door and took him away , he says.
Why they did not tell him. They confiscated his phone and held him more than 30 hours solid, as he tells it . The next day he was allowed to call his family and a lawyer. The data were recorded on his mobile phone , his room searched. The aim of arrests is for Özgün clear: “The government wants to control us and intimidated,” he says.
Turkey Students In Court:”This process would have should never be opened”
In none of the messages that are listed in the indictment, call the demonstrators for violence. The messages are protected by the freedom of expression, says lawyer Atay. Ruhat Sena Aksener who observed the process for Amnesty International, called the worrying. “This process should never have been opened. Fact that the charge is not dropped, is a bad sign for freedom of expression in the country,” she says. The whole accusation was unfounded and without foundation.
After the second day of the trial on Tuesday further proceedings against the 29 twitterers is now postponed to July 14. Would it come to a conviction or even imprisonment for up to three years, which would destroy the future plans of the students.
The two defendants Emrah and Özgün go different approaches to uncertainty. Emrah is cautious and “Do not Tweet prefer only once,” he says. He wants to concentrate on his DJ career and hopes that everything turns out well.
Özgün other hand, are combative and says: “.. I have not done anything against the law, but just my opinion That said, I will continue to do so” Next year he has finished his studies, he wants to work in television and lift prefer a new policy shipment into the program. An independent political television program envisions Özgün, because such a thing does not admit it in Turkey.
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