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Can Dündar, a journalist living in exile in Germany, has been sentenced to 18 years and nine months in prison for espionage and an additional eight years and nine months for supporting terrorism. That was decided by the Istanbul court, according to the minutes. The total prison sentence is 27 years and six months.
Therefore, he was acquitted of the secret information disclosure charge. The court also ordered Dündar’s arrest again.
The lawyers boycotted the trial in protest. They did not want to legitimize a trial that had already been politically decided beforehand, they had announced it beforehand.
The background to the process is a 2015 newspaper report in which the newspaper “Cumhuriyet” published secret information allegedly proving government arms deliveries to rebels in Syria. At the time Dündar was editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet.
Dündar was sentenced to more than five years in prison for treason of publishing secrets in 2016 and at the same time acquitted of the espionage charge. However, the Ankara High Court reversed the ruling in 2018, declaring that a new trial against Dündar should be expanded to include espionage.
More recently, a court had ruled that Dündar was volatile. According to his lawyer Abbas Yalcin, Dündar’s assets in Turkey were confiscated. The Turkish journalist has lived in Germany since the end of the summer of 2016. There are several pending cases against him in Turkey. Among other things, the journalist is accused of insulting a state official in another trial.
