Turkey Arrests Two Journalists for Story on Intelligence Trucks Bound for Syria

A Turkish court ordered the arrest of the editor-in-chief of the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper, Can Dundar, and Ankara correspondent Erdem Gul, accusing them of spying and supporting a terror organization, the state-owned Anadolu Agency said.

The interception of Syria-bound weapons consignments took place in January 2014 in Turkey, when a convoy of MIT trucks loaded with arms and ammunition was stopped and searched near the Syrian border in the southern provinces of Hatay and Adana.

Turkey has said it only supports moderate rebels in Syria, although it wants to see the Assad government toppled.

There was also criticism from the Council of Europe, with its human rights commissioner Nils Muiznieks describing the arrests in a tweet as “another blow to media freedom in Turkey”.

A week ago, Dundar’s newspaper was awarded the Press Freedom Prize by Reporters Without Borders at a ceremony in Strasbourg. Then they stated that the trucks were in fact carrying ammunition, but that it was destined for Turkish soldiers fighting in Syria.

“The president himself openly spoke about his dissatisfaction and said the journalist are going to pay the price for what they did, so it’s not surprising that they did get arrested in the end”, Geybulla told Radio Sputnik.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this week that the trucks were “carrying aid to our Bayirbucak Turkmen, “referring to a Turkic tribe backed by Turkey that’s resident in northern Syria, where civil war has been raging for four years”. “We came here to show and to prove that governments cannot engage in illegal activity and to defend this”, the journalist added.

Thousands were reported to gather in at least two separate protests in Istanbul and Ankara, where tear gas and pepper spray were used to disperse those gathered, according to RT. The 2 reporters have been charged with obtaining & divulging confidential state safety info for political or military espionage, & with willfully aiding an armed terrorist organization, the news source agency reported.

Their arrest also prompted a response from the US Embassy in Turkey.

“They ask us why we published that story”, Dundar said, according to BBC.

“We hope the Turkish courts and authorities will uphold the fundamental principle of media freedom enshrined in the Turkish Constitution”.

In August, Turkey detained three journalists reporting for Vice News in the country’s restive Kurdish southeast.

Interestingly, the journalists weren’t arrested right after the story was published, because it happened before a parliamentary election in the country.