The Turkish Constitutional Court which ruled for the release of two jailed journalists has “gone beyond the boundaries set by the Constitution and laws,” Bekir Bozdağ, the Deputy Prime Minister and the government spokesperson said.
The statement came after the Constitutional Court ruled on Jan. 11 to to release Mehmet Altan and Şahin Alpay, who have been in prison for more than year along with at least 151 other writers and journalists as part of a crackdown on the press which followed the July 15, 2016 coup attempt in Turkey.
Both are charged with links to the Fethullah Gülen network, which is allegedly behind the coup attempt. Prosecutors have mostly cited their articles criticizing the government as grounds for the charges.
The Court’s decision was well received by free-speech advocates in Turkey, however separate penal courts decided to reject the Constitutional Court ruling, which found a number of violations of the two journalists’ rights while in detention.
Following the ruling, Bozdağ tweeted, “With the Alpay and Altan decision (based on the statement released by the court) the Constitutional Court has crossed the boundaries set by the Constitution and the laws, and it has evaluated the case and the evidence, acting as a first instance court; it has reviewed whether the crime has been established by evaluating the evidence in the case.”
