Cumhuriyet

Cumhuriyet's Intelligence Trucks Story (Turkey) In 2015 the Istanbul daily Cumhuriyet published evidence of weapons being moved toward Syrian insurgents on trucks run by MIT, Turkey's intelligence service. It went to the heart of what the state was doing in a neighboring war, which is exactly why it was treated as espionage rather than journalism. Editor-in-chief Can Dündar and Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gül were jailed in 2015. Gül was later acquitted of revealing state secrets, though other charges against him dragged on for years, and in 2020 an Istanbul court sentenced Dündar, by then abroad, to 27 years and six months in absentia. The case shows how far a government will go when reporting touches national security.