Atilla Tas, Meydan
Medium:Print
Charge:Anti-State
Imprisoned:August 31, 2016

Tas, a former pop singer turned columnist for the now shuttered daily Meydan newspaper and social media dissident, was detained on August 31 as he was driving to Istanbul to turn himself in, after learning from news reports that police sought him for interrogation on suspicion he was a follower of exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen, whom the Turkish government accuses of maintaining a terrorist organization and parallel state structure within Turkey - the Fethullah Gülen Terror Organization, or FETÖ, as the government calls it - that it says was behind a failed military coup on July 15, 2016.

Tas said he cut his holiday short and drove back to Istanbul to testify as soon as he learned police sought him. The former columnist and singer tweeted a live video of himself on the way back to Istanbul to his 1.5 million followers on Twitter hours before his arrest.

Istanbul's First Court of Penal Peace on September 3 arraigned Tas and ordered him jailed, pending trial, on charges of willingly aiding a terrorist group, based in part on his work for Meydan, which police raided the day after the attempted coup. According to the court record of the arraignment hearing, which CPJ reviewed, Tas rhetorically asked the court, "If I am guilty because I worked at [Meydan] newspaper, why did my state allow an armed group to publish a newspaper?"

Asked about his work for Meydan, Tas said he is a Kemalist, a social democrat, and a member of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), a secular ideological rival of the Gülenists, and that the editor of Meydan knew this when he hired Tas.

Tas' lawyer, Ali Deniz Ceylan, told the court that his client's tweets made up the essence of the accusation against him. Ceylan added that the tweets were within the scope protected by the principle of freedom of expression.

As of late 2016, Tas had not yet been indicted, and no date had been set for his trial.

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