Turkey re-convicts journalists despite higher court ruling

A Turkish court confirmed the convictions against former journalists from Turkey's oldest newspaper on Thursday, despite their sentences being overturned by a higher court. The judgement against 12 ex-staffers from Cumhuriyet was described as "scandalous" by rights groups, and further evidence of the sweeping crackdown on media freedom under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The 12 were convicted last year of supporting, through their news coverage, three organisations that Turkey views as terrorist groups: the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the ultra-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, and the Gulen movement blamed for a failed coup in 2016.

They were sentenced to jail terms ranging from two-and-a-half years to more than eight years. In September, the Supreme Court overturned the sentences and freed the former journalists pending Thursday's retrial. But the lower court ignored that decision, and reconfirmed the original sentences, with the exception of one journalist - Kadri Gursel - who was acquitted. "Once again a Turkish court has defied the decision of the higher court. Once again, journalism is the victim in this case," said Emma Sinclair-Webb, of Human Rights Watch, outside the court. "The same very weak, bogus evidence has been used once again... It is a scandalous decision and another decision that will go down in history as evidence of Turkey's broken criminal justice system," she added.