Barış Pehlivan, publications director of the OdaTV.com website, is being prosecuted because he did not remove a reader comment from the website as he was requested to do. The reader comments were related to news about the Turkish preacher Fetullah Gülen and allegedly contained insults against the Muslim scholar who is living in the USA. Furthermore, Pehlivan did not publish the refutation sent to him.
The journalist was arrested on 18 February in the scope of the Ergenekon investigation into the clandestine ultra-national terrorist organization charged with the attempt to topple the government. Just a few days earlier, he had been taken into custody together with OdaTV administrators Soner Yalçın and news director Barış Terkoğlu. Their custody was based on allegations of "membership of the Ergenekon organization" and "inciting the public to hatred and hostility". An indictment has not been prepared yet for any of the three journalists.
Pehlivan is facing prison terms of up to two years according to Article 9/4-1c of the Law on Internet Crimes (No.5651) and Article 53 of the Turkish Criminal Law (TCK). He was brought from the Silivri Prison to the Beyoğlu (Istanbul) 5th Magistrate Criminal Court to attend the hearing on Tuesday (28 June).
The journalist stands accused of "failing to remove the contents from publication and failing to abide by the judge's decision regarding the right of reply".
The trial was opened on 17 February 2011. It is claimed that Pehlivan did not publish the refutation sent to him by the Beyoğlu Notary No.20 within one week as it was held by the Beyoğlu 3rd Magistrate Criminal Court. Furthermore, it was put forward that the reader comments that allegedly criticized Fetullah Gülen had not been removed from the website.
However, Pehlivan's lawyer Tugay Topbaş stated that the referring court decision did not specify which comments were to be removed. Even though this was contrary to the procedures, 49 reader comments had been removed, Topbaş said.
A change of judges prevented a faster handling of the trial and the case was postponed to 1 November.
The hearing was observed by the journalist's father, Turgut Pehlivan, representatives of the Freedom for Journalists Platform (GÖP) and the Press Institute Association, the President of the Turkish Journalists Union (TGS), Ercan İpekçi, and Ercan Atay from the Turkish Journalists Association (TGC). (EÖ/VK)
