An Istanbul court issued an arrest warrant for journalist and chairman of PEN Berlin Deniz Yücel on Thursday. This was announced by PEN Berlin. Yücel had "denigrated" the Turkish state and nation and insulted the Turkish head of state, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Claudius Seidl
Editor in the feuilleton.
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From February 2017 to February 2018, Yücel was held in Turkish custody for alleged "terrorist propaganda"; on 18 February 2018 he was released and returned to Germany. Both the Turkish Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights found Yücel's pre-trial detention to be unlawful and at the same time found that all comments, reports and interviews that Deniz Yücel had published in the newspaper "Die Welt" and that he was accused of were covered by freedom of the press and freedom of expression.
However, Yücel was sentenced in absentia to almost three years in prison for "propaganda for a front organization". And it is the same newspaper articles on the basis of which a new case has now been opened and an arrest warrant has been issued. PEN Berlin is calling for the immediate termination of the proceedings.