ANKARA
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has strongly criticized Turkish media outlets that published photographs of a prosecutor being held hostage by terrorists, before he got killed during a rescue attempt at an Istanbul courthouse last week.
Erdogan said that the media organizations responsible for such an act had "become associates in the killing of the prosecutor."
Prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz was held hostage for hours on March 31 in Istanbul's Caglayan Courthouse during which terrorists shared pictures of him being held at gunpoint with his mouth taped and hands tied. Several Turkish newspapers had published the pictures on their websites.
"I'd like to say that some media organizations, from the outset, covered this incident in a manner that is in contravention to humanity, decency, conscience and justice," the president said. "I condemn these media organizations which stood by not the victim, but the terrorists.
"For me, these organizations, which opened their pages and screens to terrorist propaganda, have become associates in the martyrdom of our prosecutor," he added.
Erdogan also slammed initiatives to release imprisoned journalists, for which Ankara gets criticism at home and abroad.
"These are killers of police and watchmen; they are robbers of ATMs (Automated Teller Machines)," he said. "Their convictions are clear. They killed soldiers; they threw bombs. And you define them as journalists. You are using this as a tool," he added.
Moreover, Erdogan criticized some deputies from opposition parties, including the Republican People’s Party or the CHP and the Peoples’ Democratic Party or the HDP for not calling members of the banned Marxist group who killed Kiraz as "terrorists."
The Turkish president also stressed the need for tighter security at courthouses, saying that even lawyers should be searched, a measure that is currently illegal and has drawn the ire of Turkish lawyers and resulted in protests.
