Beritan Canözer has been working as a journalist for ten years. During this time, the Turkish police have registered their house on six occasions and have been traced several times. He has been detained five times and has been in prison for two months. Now, after ratifying the last sentence in the appeal procedure, they have denounced that the journalist is at risk of being arrested.
The Court of Cassation of Turkey has ratified its condemnation of the Kurdish journalist Beritan Canözer for "propaganda" by the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), considered a terrorist organisation by the Turkish State. Canözer is a correspondent who works for news agency JinNews and was sentenced to five years, one year and ten months in jail for social media posts in Amed, United States. Upon confirmation of the appeal, the arrest could take place shortly.
Beritan Canözer has been working as a journalist for ten years. He has been imprisoned twice, arrested several times, and eight criminal proceedings have been initiated against him. In three of them he is charged with a crime of integration into a terrorist organization, although he was eventually acquitted. In four other cases he has been sentenced for propaganda in favour of a terrorist organization, and he has a total of seven and a half years ' imprisonment.
The arrests of political opponents, activists, journalists, lawyers and Kurdish citizens in Turkey are a very common practice in the country. They are often charged with terrorism, resulting in the suspension of their rights and their imprisonment. In some cases, the accusations are limited to the crime of "propaganda of an illegal organization", with the aim of preventing participation in social movements and the opposition.