The indictment for the journalists who have been under arrest for 191 days has been presented. They were arrested for their news coverage of the hacked e-mails of Berat Albayrak, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources [also Erdogan’s son-in-law]. Redhack had published these e-mails earlier.

The journalists who were arrested last December following their reports on the leaked e-mails by Redhack are Dicle News Agency’s (DİHA) News Director Ömer Çelik and reporter Metin Yoksu, Diken’s former-editor Tunca Öğreten, Etkin News Agency’s (ETHA) Managing Editor Derya Okatan, BirGün newspaper’s journalist Mahir Kanaat, Yolculuk newspaper’s Managing Editor Eray Sargın and German Die Welt’s correspondent for Turkey Deniz Yücel.  Yücel’s file is dealt with separately from the others.  

The journalists are accused of “propagating for illegal organisations”, “obstructing information system and destruction or changing evidence”, “being members of organisations”, “committing crimes for organisations”, “members of armed organisation”.  

The prosecutor argued that journalists’ Twitter posts constitute a crime and suggested that the hacked e-mails of Albayrak were used to create a ‘perception operation’.

The prosecutor further argued that this is not journalism and the journalists tried to discredit the energy policies and the government by using Albayrak’s e-mails. 

The indictment suggested that the journalists ‘tried to create a perception that Albayrak was associated with DAESH terror organisation’.  

Among other things that were considered to be a crime in the indictment were sharing news about Kurdish people being killed in the basements in Cizre in the South-East of Turkey in military operations, criticisms of media being silent about it, or sharing pictures from the Kurdish Rojava region of Syria on social media, keeping at home the summary proceedings of the corruption operations of 17/25 December 2013 [which were carried out allegedly by Gulenist authorities, and where  a number of people were arrested, including businessmen, bureaucrats, and children of ministers who later resigned, and a lot of cash confiscated], or resurfacing the news exposing allegedly the National Intelligence Organisation’s lorries destined for Syria and loaded with weapons to be delivered to the rebel groups fighting in Syria. 

Additionally, the indictment dealt with German Die Welt newspaper’s correspondent for Turkey, Deniz Yücel, separately. In the indictment, it was noted that the journalists were in telephone contact with Deniz Yücel.