Turkish-Cypriot journalist sentenced to a year in jail by Ankara court
Sener Levent, the journalist and editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Cypriot newspaper Avrupa, has been sentenced in absentia to one year in prison in Turkey over an article titled “The Kurds and Us.”
According to a report in Yeniduzen, the article was deemed offensive to the Turkish president.
The court instructed Levent to pay a fine for the postage and notification fees of the prosecution, a sum he has refused to pay, rejecting the charges.
“Because they did not get the outcome they wanted from our courts, they began prosecuting us in absentia in Ankara. They have dismantled a fair and independent judiciary in Turkey. They have nullified it. The courts are at the disposal of Tayyip Erdogan,” Levent said, referring to the Turkish president.
This is the second lawsuit filed against Levent. In 2017 he was sentenced in absentia to one year in prison in Turkey for a cartoon published in Avrupa.
Levent noted that there are thousands of similar cases against journalists in Turkey.
