The editor of Turkey’s most influential dissident newspaper has said in an interview from his prison cell that the country’s ongoing crackdown on journalists is the worst in its history and that he was imprisoned for doing his job.
Can Dündar, the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet, also said the EU was betraying its democratic values by seeking a rapprochement with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in the hope that he would stem the flow of refugees into Europe while ignoring human rights violations.
“We always looked at the European Union as an anchor, a model to raise the standard of democracy in Turkey to universal levels, not as leverage to dictatorships,” he said. “Now, if the EU, in order to stop the influx of refugees by turning our lands into a big concentration camp, agrees to turn a blind eye while Erdoğan spurns democracy, human rights, freedom of press and rule of law, it means that the EU is discarding its founding principles in order to protect its short-term interests.”
Dündar was arrested in November along with his newspaper’s bureau chief in Ankara, Erdem Gül, and charged with espionage and divulging state secrets over a story published six months earlier which alleged that the Turkish intelligence service, MIT, was sending weapons to rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad in Syria under the guise of humanitarian aid.
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