“The world is shocked! Death sentence for president who got 52% of the vote.” This was the headline Turkey’s mass-selling daily Hurriyet used on its website — with a photo of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — after ousted Egyptian leader Mohammed Morsi was sentenced to death May 16. The story unleashed a fierce onslaught on the paper by both Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
Adding to the pressure, a lawyer named Rahim Kurt, who turned out to have sought a berth on the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) ticket for the June 7 elections, lodged a criminal complaint against Hurriyet, demanding that Editor-in-Chief Sedat Ergin and online editor Izzet Dogan be arrested and tried on terror-related charges. The lawyer said Hurriyet “incited hatred and enmity among the people, encouraged armed action against the Turkish government, praised crime and criminals and spread terrorist propaganda.”
