Daily Akşam’s chief editor sentenced to pay compensation to Aydın Doğan

ISTANBUL

Doğan Group Honorary Chairman Aydın Doğan.

Turkish daily Akşam’s editor-in-chief, Murat Kelkitlioğlu, has been sentenced to pay compensation worth 3,000 Turkish Liras to Doğan Group Honorary Chairman Aydın Doğan over a column that he wrote about Doğan. 

Doğan’s lawyer Şehnaz Yüzer filed a complaint with the Istanbul 12th Civil Court of First Instance against Kelkitlioğlu for his column dated May 21, 2016, titled “Is Aydın Doğan threatening the Supreme Court?” demanding compensation worth 20,000 liras. 

The column was published in the daily with a summary on the front page with a headline reading, “Is he threatening the judge?” 

In her petition, Yüzer said that “what’s written has nothing to do with actual reality” in the column “that alleges the members of the court were threatened with demands such as ‘End the case,’” in a case into Petrol Ofisi (POAŞ).

“My client was illegally involved in the case regarding a company that he is not even a board member with the pressure of the defendant and the partisan media. What’s written has nothing to do with concrete reality. My client has always been the target of the government in every period and has always protected his respect and trust to the law and objective judiciary.  The defendant, who knows very well that illegal complaints are filed, took refuge in slander of pressure and threat. He produced an intentional scenario and wrote the column subject to the case,” Yüzer said. 

The Istanbul 12th Civil Court of First Instance, in return, on June 13 fined Kelkitlioğlu to pay 3,000 liras in compensation.