Support to Can Dündar and Erdem Gül
Reacting to Can Dündar and Erdem Gül's standing trial with the request of aggravated life imprisonment because of their journalism activities, 16 people including intellectuals, academics, authors and artists notified themselves saying that “We are accomplices to their crime”. Gathering in front of Ankara Courthouse, the group carried the prints of Dündar and Gül's newsreport about the intelligence office's trucks loaded with guns, which is the cause of their trial.
Ankara
Speaking on behalf of the group, Prof. Dr. Baskın Oran said: “This is an unprecedented case: they are spies, but they publish the information they have, instead of sharing it with foreign countries. We are here for supporting them. We are not the ones who wrote the newsreport, but we are here to say that we accept all the legal consequences by putting our signature under that report.” The protesting group including Prof. Dr. Sibel Özbudun, writer Temel Demirer, Ali Gökkaya, Ali Sair Çetinoğlu, Ayser İren, Prof. Dr. Baskın Oran, Elçin Öz, Ercan Sadık İpekçi, Ergin Şehirli, Fatin Kanat, Hüsnü Erdem, Oktay Etiman, Perihan Pulat, Hasan Ünal and Kazım Genç went on to hand their petitions after the press statement. Public Prosecutor's Office didn't allow them to notify themselves and they went to Bureau of Press Offences Investigation and handed their papers, including the prints of Cumhuriyet's report.
Support from Istanbul
Simultaneously, another group in Istanbul protested the trial with the press statement made in front of Istanbul Courthouse. Speaking on behalf of the group, Şanar Yurdatapan reminded the campaign that they initiated for 185 people who stood trial 21 years ago because of a book by Yaşar Kemal and said: “After 21 years, we say that if Can Dündar and Erdem Gül committed a crime, we are accomplices to that crime and we notify ourselves.”
After the statement, Bahadır Altan, Ferhat Tunç, Gülşen İşeri, Rakel Dink, Arat Dink, Şanar Yurdatapan, Halil Vecdi Sayar, Osman Gürhan Ertür, Nevzat Onaran, Süleyman Özkaplan, Oğuz Güven, Necmiye Alpay and M. Celal Başlangıç distributed the prints of Dündar and Gül's newsreport to the people around and enter the courthouse for notifying themselves.
