Constitutional Court's decision on jailed journalists

The Constitutional Court has reached a very important decision upon an individual application, which is about the highly debated freedom of press. The decision rules, "Giving a jail sentence for a press offence is openly contradictory to the journalist's freedom of expression and freedom of press." 

This decision of the Constitutional Court is in coherence with the former decisions the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) reached on similar cases. In several other decisions the ECHR said, "Even the existence of a criminal penalty is a threat to freedom of press."  

Normally, even the calls to give statements from the office of the prosecutor for journalists about their work should be regarded as a type of penalty threat. 

As a matter of fact, the Constitutional Court decision said the suspension of the announcement of the verdict would create a concern of punishment, thus restricting press freedom. After its decision, the case concerning journalist Orhan Pala should be reheard. Normally, the court must comply with the Constitutional Court decision, but as I said, "under normal conditions." 

In this country we have seen many times that courts and prosecutors act contrary to ECHR and Constitutional Court decisions. Because of this, I am saying "Let's see the practice."

We will not be waiting too long for the practice. According to the Solidarity Platform with Jailed Journalists, 150 journalists are held in prisons. Most of them do not even have an indictment written about them; their pre-trial arrests function as penalty. 

Why the indictments are not written is a secret known to everybody. An overwhelming majority of these journalists have been arrested for being "terrorists" but prosecutors cannot find any...