Turkey Journalist Dundar Escapes Shooting, Attacker Held
Turkish opposition journalist Can Dundar escaped an apparent attempt on his life by a gunman Friday outside the courthouse in Istanbul where he was standing trial on hugely controversial charges of revealing state secrets, an AFP reporter said.
Brandishing a pistol, the attacker fired several times before being detained by police. Dundar, the editor-in-chief of leading Turkish opposition daily Cumhuriyet, was unharmed.
Dundar was outside the courthouse during a break as the court prepared to deliver its verdict in his trial for allegedly revealing state secrets in a newspaper story.
The assailant fired twice or three times in front of the cameras of journalists who had crowded outside Istanbul's main courthouse during the closed door trial.
Television footage showed Dundar's wife Dilek holding the attacker by his collar and surrendering him to the police, with bloggers on social media saluting her bravery.
"You are (a) traitor. You will pay a price," the attacker shouted at Dundar according to CNN-Turk.
NTV television reported that its reporter Yagiz Senkal was lightly injured because of the ricocheting bullets.
- 'I know who's to blame' -
"I am okay ... The court was in a break to deliver a verdict. The attack occurred after we went out to wait for the ruling," Dundar said.
"I don't know who or what it is. I only saw the gun had been pointed at me," he added.
Special plain clothes police agents turned their weapons on the man, ordering him to lie chest down on the ground before detaining him without problem.
CNN-Turk television identified the attacker as a man named Murat Sahin, born in 1976, who has an unspecified previous criminal history. He is from the central Anatolian city of Sivas but lives in Istanbul.
Dundar and Erdem Gul, his Ankara bureau chief, are charged with revealing state secrets over a story accusing the government of seeking to illicitly deliver arms bound for Syria.
Cumhuriyet's report on a shipment of arms intercepted at the Syrian border in January 2014 sparked a furore when it was published last May, fueling speculation about Turkey's role in the Syrian conflict and its alleged ties to Islamist groups in the country.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reacted furiously to the allegations, personally warning Dundar he would "pay a heavy price."
Accusing Erdogan and pro-government media of whipping up a climate of hatred against him, Dundar said: "We know very well who showed me as a target."
Kemal Kilidaroglu, head of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) tweeted: "Those who make journalists who are doing their jobs a target with hate speech are responsible for the attack against Can Dundar."
The case against Dundar and Gul has been a lightning rod for concerns about eroding freedoms of the press since Erdogan became president in August 2014.
Last week an Istanbul court sentenced two prominent Turkish journalists from Cumhuriyet to two years behind bars for illustrating their columns with a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed published by French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.
Some 2,000 people, including many journalists, are also facing charges of insulting Erdogan.
There also remain huge concerns about the security of journalists in Turkey, particularly after the 2007 murder of the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.
Dink, 52, was shot dead with two bullets to the head in broad daylight outside the offices of his Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos in central Istanbul.
A 17-year-old dropout was convicted of the murder but dozens of former police chiefs went on trial last month on negligence charges for failing to prevent the murder plot.
Source: Agence France Presse
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