Deniz Tekin
The 16th hearing in the trial of journalist Ramazan Ölçen, the former publisher of Azadiya Welat, was held at the Diyarbakır 11th High Criminal Court in southeastern Turkey. The court ruled to await the outcome of a request sent to the Ministry of Justice to collect Ölçen’s testimony from abroad and to enforce the outstanding arrest warrant against him.
Ölçen is facing up to 15 years in prison on charges of "membership in a terrorist organization," based on evidence cited in the indictment. The prosecution points to news stories and opinion articles published in Azadiya Welat—a Kurdish-language newspaper shut down under an emergency decree following the 2016 coup attempt—as well as publications seized during a raid on the paper’s offices.
Neither Ölçen, who resides abroad, nor his attorney Resul Temur, who submitted an excuse for his absence, were present at the hearing. The prosecutor requested that procedural deficiencies be addressed and that the arrest warrant be executed.
The court decided to wait for the response to the Ministry of Justice’s letter regarding Ölçen’s testimony abroad and for the execution of the arrest warrant. The next hearing is scheduled for Dec. 24, 2025.
Background
On March 4, 2017, police raided Azadiya Welat, detaining eight staff members, including Ramazan Ölçen. All were released on March 6. Ölçen had been the publisher of the newspaper since 2014. In 2018, prosecutors filed an indictment against him, citing the publication’s forced closure by decree and the seizure of allegedly banned materials during the raid. Ölçen denied all charges when the trial began in 2019. Due to his residence abroad, an arrest warrant was issued for him.
