Ercan Gün, Fox TV
Medium:Television
Charge:Anti-State
Imprisoned:July 29, 2016

Police in Istanbul detained Ercan Gün, a news editor for Turkish Fox TV, on July 29, 2016, as part of a sweeping crackdown on journalists and others suspected of being followers of exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen, according to his lawyer and court documents reviewed by the Committee to Protect Journalists. The government accuses Gülen of maintaining a terrorist organization and "parallel state structure" (or FETÖ/PDY, as the government calls it) within Turkey that it blames for orchestrating a failed military coup on July 15, 2016.

Istanbul's Third Court of Penal Peace on August 2, 2016, ordered the veteran journalist released on probation, but police again detained him before he left the court house, on suspicion that he had broadcast a news report to tarnish the image of the military on behalf of FETÖ/PDY, his lawyer told CPJ.

The new allegations stemmed from his having broadcast footage on February 1, 2007, showing Ogün Samast, whom a juvenile court in 2011 convicted of the January 19, 2007 murder of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, receiving a Turkish flag and congratulations on the murder from military police officers less than a day after Dink's murder. The footage aired on TGRT-TV, which Fox bought and renamed in 2007. Prosecutors alleged that the journalist had broadcast the footage on orders from FETÖ/PDY members, according to Gün's lawyer, Çagri Çetin.

Istanbul's Second Court of Penal Peace on August 25, 2016, ordered Gün jailed pending trial on the accusation that he was a member of a terrorist organization, and that he had aired the story on Samast at FETÖ/PDY's behest in order "to create the perception that the military is related to the murder," according to court records of the hearing, which CPJ reviewed.

Çetin told CPJ that police repeatedly asked Gün who gave him the footage of Samast and the military police, and that an officer had promised that Gün would be released if he implicated Ekrem Dumanli, then the editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Zaman, which the government ordered closed using emergency powers it assumed after the failed July 2016 coup attempt. Gün previously worked at Zaman. Police produced call logs showing that he had spoken with Dumanli and other senior Zaman staff by telephone shortly before the video aired, Çetin told CPJ. Gün said the calls to Dumanli and others at Zaman were in pursuit of his severance package, his lawyer told CPJ.

Çetin told CPJ that his client has suffered from sleeping disorders and vision problems since being jailed in July.

As of late 2016, Gün was in Siliviri Prison in Istanbul and had not been indicted. No date had been set for his trial.

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