Inside the courtroom

After a long time, we had a chance to see our colleagues from daily Cumhuriyet. We were all packed into a mid-size courtroom, which felt like a Finnish sauna, on the first floor of the Çağlayan Courthouse. This was the first time 12 of them were brought before a judge after nine months. Nevertheless, the audience was as energetic as though they were in a rock concert.

Cumhuriyet is more than a newspaper, and it has always been that way. In his defense on Jan. 24, Akin Atalay, the chairman of the newspaper's executive board and a lawyer by profession said, "Embedded in the roots and history of Cumhuriyet, lie secular values, independence and freedom. This paper has paid a dear price for these values for decades. Its writers and editors have been threatened, jailed and assassinated. Cumhuriyet is no stranger to government threats. We are here as the humble protectors of this incredible inheritance."

According to the indictment, Cumhuriyet, still the bedrock of Kemalist ideas, is accused of assisting the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ), the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the outlawed Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) combined. If for example a columnist for a pro-government newspaper happens to pen an article about the Kurdish peace process, it is considered to be part of the "opening," but if Cumhuriyet's Ahmet Şık obtains information and writes a news story about the PKK's position on an issue, it is called aiding terrorism. 

Cumhuriyet's editorial stance can be discussed and criticized. But it cannot be jailed with an indictment that is full of assumptions that use "as if" as reality. Murat Sabuncu, a veteran business reporter and currently the chief editor of Cumhuriyet, on the second day of the...