A court in Turkey has sentenced a Wall Street Journal reporter to more than two years in prison on terrorism charges over an article, the newspaper said in a statement Tuesday, in a case that highlighted the Turkish government’s escalating clampdown on press freedoms.
The reporter, Ayla Albayrak, was in New York at the time of the sentencing and planned to appeal the decision, the Journal said.
Scores of media workers are imprisoned in Turkey, which has earned the distinction of being the world’s leading jailer of journalists. The latest verdict was unusual, however, in that it targeted a reporter for a U.S. newspaper. It came as the Trump administration and the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are locked in a bitter dispute over Turkey’s recent arrest of a U.S. Consulate employee in Istanbul.
The charges against Albayrak, a dual citizen of Turkey and Finland, stemmed from an article that she wrote two years ago on Turkey’s ongoing war with Kurdish militants, the Journal statement said.
(c) 2017, The Washington Post · Kareem Fahim
{Matzav.com}
This is nasty. Let’s hope that Ankara will ever be a despot removed future.
I can put hopes in the WSJ daily for news today. It is a valued source. I am sure my prayers from my stories read are not going to depose the despot. This person should not face the evil hate of a despot regime afraid even a printed word will topple its entire wage.
Let’s see what Hashem will do in the future with Turkey. It can not be justified to jail our journalists. They work too hard.
A terrible feeling.