Journalist Charged With Prison For Defense With Acrostic

BirGün newspaper editor-in-chief Barış İnce has been charged with 4 years and 8 months of prison for insulting pthe president of Turkey when he defended himself with an acrostic.

The aforementioned charges were made after İnce faced an investigation as editor-in-chief due to his newspaper’s coverage on TÜRGEV Foundation - an entity with president son Bilal Erdoğan in the administration.  

Related to the case, BirGün newspaper journalists Abdülhamit Çay and Cengiz Aktürk are standing trial for defamation due to an article entitled “They have built double road to their pockets” on March 3. 

“There is political criticism here. Acrostics was one of the most flamboyant ways to do that,” İnce told bianet. 

“Charging somebody for acrostics,” he added, “is fascism”. 

The case indictment cited that Ince’s defense statement was published on BirGün newspaper under the title “Such is my defense”. The prosecutor claimed that the first letters of each paragraphs in the article started in the fashion that it would form the message “Thief Tayyip”. [Hırsız Tayyip in Turkish](EA/BM)

* Click here to read the article in Turkish.