Judicial control measures for Taş remain in place since Justice Ministry has yet to respond to request for Taş to be prosecuted under TCK 301 charge

The third hearing of the retrial of journalists Ahmet Memiş, Ali Akkuş, Cemal Azmi Kalyoncu, Gökçe Fırat Çulhaoğlu, Ünal Tanık, Yakup Çetin, Yetkin Yıldız and musician Atilla Taş, who was a newspaper columnist between 2015 and 2016, was held at the Istanbul 25th High Criminal Court on 26 October 2021.

All eight were convicted in 2018 in the case publicly known as the “FETÖ media trial,” in which 26 defendants faced “terror” charges over alleged ties with the Fethullah Gülen network. Their convictions were overturned in 2020 by the 16th Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals, which held that Memiş, Kalyoncu, Çulhaoğlu, Tanık, Çetin and Yıldız should be charged with “aiding a terrorist organization without being a member” (TCK 220/7) and that Taş, who was convicted of “aiding a terrorist organization,” should be charged with “insulting the president” (TCK 299) and “publicly degrading the institutions and organs of the state” (TCK 301).

P24 monitored the hearing, during which the court heard five witnesses who testified for Akkuş, Tanık, Çetin and Yıldız.

Taş’s lawyer, who submitted the Turkish translation of the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) Atilla Taş judgment to the court, requested her client’s acquittal based on the Strasbourg court’s judgment. The presiding judge reminded that the Justice Ministry’s approval for Taş to be prosecuted on the TCK 301 charge was still pending and that therefore Taş had yet to make his statement regarding that charge.

In an interim ruling, the court lifted the judicial control measures imposed on all defendants except Taş and adjourned the trial until 17 February 2022.