The Turkish government struck another hard blow against civil society and human rights advocates in the country. On April 25, a Turkish court sentenced Osman Kavala, a prominent civil rights activist and philanthropist, to life imprisonment for “attempting to overthrow the government.” The court also sentenced seven other human rights defenders to jail for 18 years each on charges of attempting to bring down the government.
Meanwhile, the Turkish authorities have long been targeting Şener Levent, a Turkish Cypriot journalist and a critic of Turkey’s military occupation of Cyprus.
Levent, the director of Turkish Cypriot daily Avrupa, announced on April 26 that a court found him guilty in a case brought against him in Ankara for allegedly “insulting” Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a cartoon his newspaper published. Levent was given a one-year prison sentence. The journalist announced the ruling on his social media account, writing:
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Through this decision, the fascist government in Ankara, which has intensified its pressure on us, is targeting and trying to intimidate everyone in our country [Cyprus] who opposes it… The law which is stuck between the lips of a dictator is already dead in Turkey.
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In an interview with Providence, Levent said:
Tayyip Erdogan does not even recognize the verdicts of the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights). There is no rule of law in Turkey. I do not recognize their court decision. I am a citizen of the Republic of Cyprus and therefore an EU citizen. I am not a Turkish citizen. This decision is literally a mirror of the situation between the colonialists and a journalist in their colony.
In a public statement, the Union of Cyprus Journalists said that they stand by Levent. The president of the Union, George Frangou, added that there is a real danger of Levent being “extradited” to Turkey. Levent lives in the Turkish-occupied part of Nicosia, the capital of the Republic of Cyprus.
Read more: Providence mag
