Reporter to complain about Eskişehir governor over e-mail

ESKİŞEHİR

Azim Tuna, the governor of Eskişehir, has threatened daily Radikal correspondent İsmail Saymaz with retribution if he did not stop reporting on the murder of a Gezi protester. DHA photo

Daily Radikal correspondent İsmail Saymaz is set to file a criminal complaint against the Eskişehir governor over an e-mail the latter sent regarding his reports on the killing of a Gezi protester.

While Saymaz’s lawyers are preparing to press charges against Tuna, the reporter himself will file a complaint petition to the Interior Ministry.

Eskişehir’s governor said the e-mail sent to Turkish daily Radikal’s correspondent was written in an attempt to object to the correspondent’s “inaccurate and distorted news,” adding that his intention was solely to express a personal grievance.

Azim Tuna, the governor of Eskişehir, released a statement on Oct. 3 on the Eskişehir Governor’s Office website, stating that he felt the need to make a statement in order to avoid any misunderstanding surrounding the e-mail he had sent to Radikal correspondent İsmail Saymaz.

“The e-mail sent to Radikal’s correspondent İsmail Saymaz’s personal mailbox does not bear any other meaning than a reproach to the abovementioned unnecessary and continuously inaccurate, distorted news articles; it was a ‘personal’ email, expressing my own reaction to and grievance in the way that the news was handled in the media,” reads the statement.

Tuna, who has been the subject of harsh criticism over his remarks that Ali İsmail Korkmaz might have been beaten by his own friends in an effort to frame the police, had threatened Saymaz with retribution if he did not stop reporting on the issue. “If you discuss this subject by interpreting it again, you’re vile and inglorious,” Gov. Azim Tuna had said in an email sent on the morning of Oct. 2.

Saymaz had penned a response to Tuna’s e-mail, which was published on the daily’s website, putting forth the articles he had written about Korkmaz’s case until today that could have caused the governor to become “disturbed.”

“Gov. Tuna said, ‘don’t forget that [we may cross paths someday],’ as a response to the questions I asked. [All I know is that] Ali İsmail is now six-feet-under. Underground lies a kid who was killed despotically in a dark street in this country. This is why I ask. I am very comfortable with the ‘disturbance’ I have caused,” reads a part of the article.

Korkmaz was killed after being beaten with batons by plainclothes men during a demonstration in the Central Anatolian province as part of the country-wide Gezi protests. Five men, including a police officer, are facing jail time over the murder.