The sixth hearing in Turkey’s so-called Cumhuriyet lawsuit took place at the courthouse in the Silivri maximum security penitentiary outside Istanbul Sept. 11. The defendants — 17 managers, reporters and writers — from Cumhuriyet, the country’s largest secular daily newspaper, are accused of membership in a terrorist organization. Even though many secular Turks hoped that the six defendants who have remained in detention since Oct. 31, 2016, would be released, the court decided to keep them in jail until the next session on Sept. 25.
The left-leaning news website Diken announced the decision with the headline, “Cruelty Continues.”