European court orders Turkey to pay damages to journalist jailed over coup

The European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday that Turkey should pay 16,000 euros ($18,105) to a journalist in damages over violating her freedom of expression and right to liberty.

Nazli Ilicak, a political commentator and former lawmaker, had been arrested 10 days after the 2016 attempted military coup in Turkey. She was charged with attempting to overthrow Turkey’s constitutional order and government and of committing offenses on behalf of the Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organization, or FETO, the crime gang of US-based cleric Gulen accused of staging the coup. Following a complicated, sometimes Kafkaesque legal case that went back and forth between Assize Court and the Court of Cassation, Ilicak was finally sentenced in 2019 to eight years and nine months for voluntarily aiding FETO without being part of its hierarchical structure. The court also decided on her release from prison under judicial supervision because she had already spent 1,197 days behind bars, including a pre-detention period that the European Court found violated the European Convention of Human Rights, to which Council of Europe-member Turkey is a signatory.

On April 14, 2021, the Court of Cassation again overturned Ilicak’s conviction. The criminal proceedings are still ongoing.

The Strasbourg-based court said that there had been “no plausible reason” to suspect Ilicak belonged to a terrorist organization or attempted to overthrow the government or hinder its functioning. The articles and the tweets she penned “reflected the applicant’s views on current political events — in particular the attempted coup — expressing value judgments or criticisms of various government actions,” the ruling said.