The sixth hearing in Turkey’s so-called Cumhuriyet lawsuit took place at the courthouse in the Silivri maximum security penitentiary outside Istanbul Sept. 11. The defendants — 17 managers, reporters and writers — from Cumhuriyet, the country’s largest secular daily newspaper, are accused of membership in a terrorist organization. Even though many secular Turks hoped that the six defendants who have remained in detention since Oct. 31, 2016, would be released, the court decided to keep them in jail until the next session on Sept. 25.

The left-leaning news website Diken announced the decision with the headline, “Cruelty Continues.”

The terrorism charges against the “Cumhuriyet group” are hard to believe. The terrorist group these secular newspapermen are accused of working for is none other than the network of the Pennsylvania-based religious preacher Fethullah Gulen. Turks from across the political spectrum derogatively refer to Gulen’s followers as “FETO” (Fethullah Gulen Terror Organization) and many believe that Gulen masterminded last year’s attempted coup.

The case is doubly curious because the three most prominent defendants in the case — columnist Kadri Gursel (who is also an Al-Monitor columnist), cartoonist Musa Kart (who is best known for drawing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a cat) and veteran reporter Ahmet Sik — are hardly FETO material.