'EU refugee deal should not overshadow right violations in Turkey,' jailed Turkish journalist says

Jailed Turkish journalist Can Dündar has sent the Italian prime minister an open letter arguing the rapprochement between Turkey and the European Union over refugees should not overshadow violations of fundamental rights and freedoms in Turkey during the country's EU accession process.

Daily Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Dündar and Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gül were arrested on terrorism charges on Nov. 26 last year over a story on state-owned trucks purportedly carrying weapons to Syria that was published on daily Cumhuriyet in early 2014. 

The trucks owned by the National Intelligence Agency (M?T), Turkey's state intelligence agency, were stopped and searched in the southern province of Hatay in January 2014, which had been highlighted on the daily's front page at the time. The story resulted in the imprisonment of the journalists over their reporting.

Dündar and Gül previously sent EU leaders a letter when the latter hammered out a deal with Turkey to ease the country's EU accession process in return for Turkey's help in stemming the refugee flow into Europe, saying, "We would also like to hope that your desire to end the crisis will not stand in the way of your sensitivity toward human rights and the freedom of the press and expression as fundamental values of the Western world."

Here is the full text of Dündar's letter to Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi:

"Dear Prime Minister, 

I wrote you a letter when I was arrested over a news story I reported on in late November.

You were set to talk to the Turkish prime minister on the situation of Syrian refugees at the time. You planned that Turkey would keep refugees on its own soil and not let them cross into Europe in exchange for 3 billion euros in aid the...