Prison Threat for Sports Journalist Uluç

The Istanbul Public Chief Prosecution prepared an indictment on journalist and writer Hıncal Uluç under charges of defamation according to Article 125 of the Turkish Criminal Court (TCK). Uluç is accused of alleged insult of Adnan Sezgin via the media. Adnan is sports director at the renowned Galatasaray football club.

Should the indictment be accepted by the Istanbul Magistrate Criminal Court, the journalist would face imprisonment of between three months and two years because of his article published in the "Photomatch" newspaper.

The charges are based on the article entitled "It has become a tradition" published in Uluç's newspaper on 27 July 2010 and on his statements made in a television program.

The indictment was prepared by Istanbul Public Prosecutor İsmail Onaran. It puts forward that the contents of both the writing and the program were "far away from criticism" and constituted an "insult of the complainant".

The article dealt with the fact that the Galataray football team was not able to win over its counterpart Fenerbahçe. It read, "Adnan Sezgin who was appointed as head of the team comes and goes with his BMW that was allocated to him by the club, he does not go by bus. Would the great Adnan Sezgin stoop to enter a bus...! He comes and goes with his 735 BMW. Who knows - we do not know whom he takes on a ride! [...]".

Additionally, Uluç said in a television program, "Everybody knows that Adnan Sezgin is not a Galatasaray fan. The entire Galatasaray community knows that Sezgin distributed the money against signatures, the so-called incentive premium, that came from the Istanbulspor football club to defeat Galataray".

According to the indictment, Uluç said that he was not the only one who wrote about the money paid by Istanbulspor, that another newspaper reported about the incident in as well, that there has been almost no journalist left who did not write about the issue and that Adnan Sezgin had not declared the allegation to be false. (EÖ/VK)