A Turkish opposition TV channel editor went on trial on Wednesday over on-air comments about jailed Kurdish insurgency leader Abdullah Ocalan that could put him behind bars for more than 10 years.
Tele1 chief Merdan Yanardag has been charged with spreading “terrorist propaganda” and “praising criminals” during one of his programmes in June.
Yanardag’s supporters say his case highlights the erosion of civil liberties and media freedoms during two decades of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic conservative rule.
But it also underscores the deep fissures in Turkish society about its treatment of the long-repressed Kurdish minority.
Yanardag questioned why Ocalan — who headed an insurgency waged by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) until his capture by Turkish forces in 1999 — was still being held in solitary confinement on a prison island in the Sea of Marmara.
“If normal incarceration procedures were applied, he should have been released or put under house arrest. The isolation applied to Ocalan has no place in law. It should be lifted,” he said in June.
“Abdullah Ocalan is not someone to be taken lightly,” Yanardag added. “He nearly became a philosopher in prison because he does not have anything else to do but read. He is a very intelligent person who understands politics well.”
Yanardag, 64, was detained by police within hours of finishing his live programme on June 27 and has been in pre-trial detention since.
Tele1 and a group of secular opposition lawmakers and writers are calling for Yanardag’s immediate release.
They argue that the editor’s comments were purposely taken out of context and spread on social media by members of Erdogan’s AKP party and other staunch nationalists.
Tele1 said that Yanardag was actually criticising a proposal by AKP lawmakers to restart a 2013-15 peace process with Kurdish insurgency leaders.
The PKK is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey and its Western allies for waging a four-decade rebellion that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Erdogan initially viewed the talks as a chance to both end the violence and find a lasting solution that involved giving Kurds broader cultural rights in Turkey’s southeast.
He pulled out of them after the July 2015 assassination of two police officers that were claimed — and then renounced — by the PKK.
Turkey soon resumed military operations against Kurdish groups that have since stretched into northern Iraq and parts of Syria.
The Tele1 debate over Ocalan started shortly after Erdogan defeated secular opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu in a May presidential election runoff.
Kilicdaroglu had initially courted Kurdish groups.
But he turned sharply against them after the first round in an apparent bid to steal Erdogan’s nationalist vote.
Erdogan’s AKP is now trying to win over Kurdish voters ahead of March municipal elections that threaten to end the opposition’s control of prized cities such as Istanbul and Ankara.
Yanardag appeared to be trying to point out the contradictions in the AKP’s approach to Ocalan and the Kurdish cause.
“You are holding him hostage and conduct negotiations with him,” Yanardag said on air.
