Erdem Gül

Erdem Gül (born 1967 in Giresun) is a Turkish journalist and chief of the Ankara bureau of Turkish secularist newspaper Cumhuriyet. He was arrested in November 2015 after his newspaper published footage showing the State Intelligence MİT sending weapons to Syrian Islamist fighters.^[1]

Gül studied journalism at Gazi University. He started his career at the ANKA news agency in 1992, where he monitored the rise of Necmettin Erbakan's Millî Görüş movement since the 1994 local elections, where Erbakan's Welfare Party won the mayorship in both Ankara and Istanbul. In 2010, he became parliament reporter for Cumhuriyet.^[2]

In November 2015, Cumhuriyet was awarded the 2015 Reporters Without Borders Prize for its "independent and courageous journalism."^[3]

Shortly thereafter, Gül and the newspaper's editor-in-chief Can Dündar were arrested on charges of being members of a terror organization, espionage and revealing confidential documents, facing sentences of up to life imprisonment. The investigations had been launched in May, after the newspaper published photos depicting weapons transferred to Syria in trucks of the National Intelligence Organization, subject of the MİT trucks scandal. In June 2015, Turkish President Erdoğan had publicly targeted Dündar, stating: "The individual who reported this as an exclusive story will pay a heavy price for this."^[4] After 92 days in prison, Dündar and Gül were released on 26 February 2016 after the Constitutional Court decided that their detention was aviolation of their rights.^[5]

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