Former deputy from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and former journalist Barış Yarkadaş on Thursday received to 10-month suspended sentence over a story his news website ran about a former minister.
Yarkadaş was tried as a result of a complaint filed by former minister Erdoğan Bayraktar, who was one of the main suspects in corruption investigations in December 2013. Yarkadaş said following the verdict that Turkey should no longer be a country in which journalists are punished for their reporting. He added that he does not consider the sentence of an Istanbul court to be legitimate.
The court found the former deputy guilty of violating the privacy of the plaintiff in a story that appeared on the Gerçek Gündem website in May 2014.