Zoom Image

Deniz Yücel in 2020

Photo: Marlene Gawrisch / AFP

A Turkish court has issued an arrest warrant for journalist Deniz Yücel. The decision was made in a case in which Yücel is accused of insulting the president and denigrating the Turkish state and the judiciary, his lawyer Veysel Ok said. The »Welt« correspondent lives in Germany and was not present at the trial.

According to the MLSA lawyers' association, the allegations against him relate to content from articles written by him. In it, he called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a "putschist". The writers' association »PEN Berlin« demands the immediate termination of the proceedings against its co-spokesman Yücel and called it a scandal that the proceedings had been opened at all. The trial in Istanbul is scheduled to resume on October 17.

Detained without charge

From February 2017 to February 2018, Yücel was detained without charge in the high-security Silivri prison west of Istanbul. It was only after a long political tug-of-war between Ankara and Berlin that Yücel was released and allowed to leave the country – at the same time charges were filed.

Because of his reporting, Yücel was accused of incitement, propaganda for the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and propaganda for the Gülen movement. In 2020, a Turkish court sentenced him in absentia to two years and nine months in prison for PKK propaganda. Yücel appealed the 2020 ruling. The trial is now in its third instance.

In January 2022, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Turkey for Yücel's detention, ruling that the action violated his human rights to liberty and security and freedom of expression. The Turkish Constitutional Court also concluded that the reporting from which Turkey generated its accusations is covered by freedom of the press and freedom of expression. The new arrest warrant refers to articles that had already been examined at the time.

In response to an inquiry from SPIEGEL, Yücel said that the arrest warrant meant that he had to take a stand on the new allegations. However, trust in the Turkish judiciary has been disturbed due to the experience of recent years, so that he does not expect a fair trial.

jme/dpa