Turkish academics freed on first day of trial for 'terrorist propaganda'

A Turkish court has freed four academics from jail on the first day of their trial for spreading “terrorist propaganda”, as prosecutors moved to scale back the charges against them.

The four, on trial for signing a petition denouncing the government’s military operations against Kurdish rebels, were released “pending permission from the justice ministry” to change the charge, lawyer Benan Molu told Agence France-Presse.

Under the original charge, Esra Mungan, Meral Camcı, Kivanç Ersoy and Muzaffer Kaya faced up to seven and a half years behind bars.

But prosecutors want to bring charges against them under under article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code that states that “denigrating Turkishness” is a criminal act. The offence carries a maximum sentence of two years in jail.

Supporters in court applauded as the four walked free, with the judge setting setting the next hearing for 27 September.

Earlier, Kaya had fiercely defended the petition, telling the court that the state had “not managed to stifle the voices of our conscience” and that he and the three other academics had been arrested for criticising political power, Dogan news agency said.

“You may find our petition ridiculous, but you can never say we were spreading terrorist propaganda. Acquit me,” he said.

Riot police had stood guard outside the courthouse in central Istanbul, where the academics’ trial had followed a morning hearing in the case of two journalists accused of divulging state secrets.

|About 500 people had gathered at the court to support the journalists and the scholars, with protesters holding up placards reading “Freedom for the academics” and “Freedom for the pencils”. The petition had urged Ankara to halt “its deliberate massacres and deportation of Kurdish and other peoples in the region”, infuriating the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who accused the academics of falling into a “pit of treachery”.

The four stood accused of engaging in “terrorist propaganda” and “inciting hatred and enmity” for signing the plea and making a statement on the same lines on 10 March, a day before the petition was published.

They had been held in high-security closed prisons in Istanbul since their arrest last month.