Turkey Sentences Wall Street Journal Reporter To Jail For Terrorist Propaganda

A Turkish court has just fanned the flames of an incipient diplomatic crisis between the US and NATO"s most problematic member, when it found a Wall Street Journal reporter guilty of engaging in "terrorist propaganda" in support of a banned Kurdish organization. Ayla Albayrak was sentenced to more than two years in prison for writing a 2015 story about clashes between Turkish security forces and Kurdish separatists in the country’s restive southeast.

While charges have been pending against the reporter - who presently resides in New York and was convicted in absentia – for more than a year, the decision will promptly be interpreted by the US as the latest recrimination in a spat that began last week when Turkey arrested a local employee at the US consulate in Istanbul on terrorism-related charges, alleging he was a supporter of Fehtullah Gulen, an Turkish cleric living in self-imposed exile in the US who Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has blamed for last year’s coup attempt. The arrest prompted the US to suspend visa issuance for Turkish citizens, a move that was swiftly reciprocated by the Turkish government. On Monday, Turkey announced charges against another US embassy employee, sending the Turkish lira crashing the most since the July 2016 failed "coup", while local stocks and bonds tumbled in sympathy.

WSJ Editor in Chief Gerry Baker slammed the Turkish court’s decision" “This was an unfounded criminal charge and wildly inappropriate conviction that wrongly singled out a balanced Wall Street Journal report,” said Baker. “The sole purpose of the article was to provide objective and independent reporting on events in Turkey, and it succeeded.”

The reporter, Ayla Albayrak, has dual Finnish and Turkish citizenship. On Aug. 19, 2015, WSJ published an Albayrak story titled “Urban Warfare Escalates in Turkey’s Kurdish-Majority Southeast.” The story and an accompanying video reported on the state of a conflict in Silopi, Turkey, between Turkish security forces and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. It included interviews with the local mayor and residents, a Turkish government official, as well as a representative of an organization Turkey says is the youth unit of the PKK. The PKK is considered a terrorist group by both Turkey and the UK.

“Given the current climate in Turkey, this appalling decision shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, but it did,” said Ms. Albayrak.

Trump and Erdogan discussed the improving US-Turkey relationship during a press conference in Washington earlier this year (which in retrospect could have gone better) and Trump offered his personal congratulations to Erdogan after the Turkish president won a referendum vote to retool the country’s constitution and dramatically expand his own powers. However, Turkey has been frustrated by Trump’s refusal to turn over Gulen, as well as a local prosecutors’ decision to charge members of Erdogan’s security detail with assault for attacking a group of Kurdish protesters during Erdogan’s Washington visit.

As part of the article she was convicted for, Albayrak interviewed a person who described herself as a member of the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement, or YDG-H, which the Turkish government says is the youth unit of the PKK. She has maintained that her reporting was based solely on objective fact, and didn’t represent advocacy for the separatists’ cause.

WSJ points out that the case is a rare example of Turkey bringing terrorism charges against a reporter working for a Western media outlet. Deniz Yücel, a prominent German-Turkish journalist for newspaper Die Welt, was arrested in Istanbul in February under terrorism suspicions and remains in pretrial detention.

Turkey’s crackdown on the press has intensified in recent years. Amnesty International and other rights groups say Turkey has more journalists jailed than any other country in the world. Since last summer’s coup attempt, authorities have closed more than 150 media outlets citing Erdogan’s state of emergency.

Turkey is ranked 155 on Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index this year, worse than Russia or Pakistan.

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Meanwhile, after tensions eased modestly following yesterday"s crash in the Turkish Lira, which as noted above plunged as much as 8%, its biggest one day drop since the July 2016 "attempted coup", which however promptly drew the Buy the Dippers out of the woodwork, news of the sentencing launched another major round of selling, and in light of the daily tit-for-tat deterioration in diplomacy, this time buyers of Turkish assets may just think twice.

Erdogan Could Face Arrest In Sweden After Officially Being Accused Of Genocide

Via TheAntiMedia.org,

Marking the first time Sweden - the country - has ever lodged a complaint against a head-of-state, this week five members of parliament (MPs) from the Scandinavian country officially accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of genocide.

The MPs’ complaint alleges Erdogan has committed war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity against the Kurdish majority in Turkey’s southeast region since a truce between the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and government forces fell apart in 2015.

The official complaint was filed in the Swedish International Public Prosecution Offices.

If that department decides to move forward with an investigation, warrants could be issued for the arrest of Erdogan and several other Turkish officials, such as Prime Minister Binali Yildirim.

MP Carl Schlyter says he likes the idea of Erdogan potentially having limited freedom of movement in his part of the world and hopes neighboring countries will follow suit:

“If [Mr Erdogan] is hindered from roaming around in Europe and influencing European countries the way he wants, then I hope that this will affect his politics.”

Such a move against President Erdogan was only made possible by a Swedish law passed in 2014 that allows the country to hold and judge its own court cases involving genocide and crimes against humanity, regardless of where those crimes took place.

“Anyone, who in order to completely or partially destroy a national or ethnic group of people” kills or causes serious pain or injury is “guilty of genocide,” the legislation reads.

The PKK, which originally sought an independent homeland for Turkey’s 15 million Kurds, launched its insurgency back in 1984. Since that time, an estimated 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, have died in the conflict.

Turkey Summons US Ambassador To Protest Brawl In Which Erdogan's Bodyguards Beat Up Protesters

Tensions stemming from last week"s massive brawl, caught on video, between pro-Kurdish protesters and Turkish President Recep Erdogan"s security detail, escalated on Monday after, paradoxically, Turkey lodged a formal complaint with John Bass, the U.S. ambassador in Ankara, over purportedly "aggressive" actions taken by American security personnel. The complaint accused U.S. law enforcement of failing to quell an "unpermitted" and "provocative" demonstration, and demanded a "full investigation of this diplomatic incident," according to WaPo. It failed to mention that Erdogan"s entourage was more than fully equipped to deal with this "demonstration", by attacking and beating random protesters, sending a dozen of them in the hospital.

Reuters added that the Turkish government summoned the U.S. ambassador on Monday to discuss the treatment of Erdogan’s bodyguards following Tuesday"s incident outside the Turkish ambassador"s residence in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. It appears that in the span of just five days, the two sides developed drastically different accounts of what happened, with U.S. police accusing Erdogan"s bodyguards of viciously attacking the allegedly peaceful protesters. The State Department called the conduct of Erdogan"s body guards "deeply disturbing" and has "raised concerns about those events at the highest levels," according to a spokeswoman who spoke with WaPo.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Embassy said last week that Erdogan"s bodyguards had acted in self-defense, and that the protesters were affiliated with the Kurdish terrorist group PKK. Some of the protesters were waving the flag of the YPG, the Kurdish militia organization, that the U.S. recently pledged to arm and which Turkey accuses of being terrorist.

The exact nature of the "mistreatment" to which Turkey is objecting remains unclear. Two people were arrested during the brawl, which Reuters is now reporting left 11 people injured, including a Washington police officer. It"s been confirmed that one of those arrested was a protester. However, it"s unclear if the second was a member of Erdogan’s entourage.

Since the incident, nothing but outrage has been building up at both the State Department and Capitol Hill. John McCain angrily (of course) accused Erdogan’s entourage of disrespecting their hosts, fuming to the press that the U.S. isn’t “a third world country” and that the Turkish ambassador should “get the hell out” of the U.S. And at least one Democratic Congressman asked President Donald Trump to officially expel the foreign minister.

Footage of what the Washington police chief described as “a vicious attack” shows security guards dressed in suits viciously kicking and punching protesters. In one particularly grisly scene, a security official repeatedly kicks an injured protester in the face.

The brawl occurred just hours after Erdogan and Trump had wrapped up a historic meeting at the White House where both Trump and the Turkish leader, fresh from his power-enhancing referendum victory, smiled during a press conference and pledged to renew frayed relations between the two countries.  Erdogan arrived in Washington with misgivings about the U.S.’s decision to arm the YPG, as well as the Trump administration’s refusal to hand over Fetullah Gulen, a cleric living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. Erdogan has accused Gulen, a former ally, or orchestrating the July coup attempt that left more than 200 Turks dead.

While it remains unclear what triggered the melee, it no longer appears relevant: the ensuing diplomatic fallout has overshadowed talks that both Turkey and the U.S. had described as constructive.