Turkey seeks life terms for two jailed opposition journalists

Prosecutors in Turkey have demanded life terms for two journalists accused of revealing government secrets with a report claiming that Ankara was smuggling arms into Syria.

Prosecutors asked an Istanbul court on Wednesday to sentence the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Can Dundar, and Ankara bureau chief, Erdem Gul, each to one aggravated life sentence, the Dogan news agency reported.

Dundar and Gul have been formally charged with obtaining and revealing state secrets “for espionage purposes” and seeking to “violently” overthrow the Turkish government as well as aiding an “armed terrorist organization,” read the indictment.

They have been under arrest since late November 2015 on charges of treason, espionage, and terrorist propaganda.

Back in May, the opposition paper published several articles containing photos of what it claimed to be trucks carrying weapons by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT) into Syria in 2014.

Dundar wrote that the trucks carrying the weapons were reportedly searched by police, according to photos and videos obtained by Cumhuriyet, but “beneath the camouflage composed of medicines boxes, weapons and ammunition were found.”

“The truck was held for a while, but following the intervention of government officials a safe passage into Syria was granted,” he wrote.

The opposition paper said that the trucks were carrying six steel containers, holding 1,000 artillery shells, 50,000 machine gun rounds, 30,000 heavy machine gun rounds and 1,000 mortar shells for the militants fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Ankara, however, denied the allegations, saying the trucks had been carrying humanitarian aid to Syria. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also filed a criminal complaint and accused the journalists of revealing “state secrets and aiding terrorists.”

Turkey has reportedly been a major supporter of the militant groups operating in Syria, which has been grappling with a foreign-backed crisis since March 2011. It has also been accused on numerous occasions of being involved in illegal oil trade with Daesh terrorists, another accusation it has denied.

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