Editor Is Latest Casualty of Taboo Over Turkey's Syrian Border
- Court jails Can Dundar, one of Turkey's best-known journalists
- Jailing fulfils a promise by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
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It’s never been more useful to monitor Turkey’s southeastern border: refugees cross in, Islamic State fighters cross out, and this week a Russian jet’s alleged trespass sparked a diplomatic crisis. Yet doing so is fraught with danger, as one of Turkey’s most celebrated journalists discovered when a front-page scoop on the issue landed him in jail.
On Thursday, a court in Istanbul ordered that Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, the newspaper’s Ankara bureau chief, be jailed pending trial on charges of political and military espionage. Their crime: publishing images which allege to show Turkey’s intelligence agency shipping weapons to Syria.