North Cyprus Afrika Newspaper Staff Found Innocent of 'insulting Erdogan'

North Cyprus Afrika Newspaper Staff Found Innocent of 'insulting Erdogan'According to the Turkish independent news site, Gazete Duvar, the District Court in North Cyprus has acquitted staff members of the left-wing Cypriot newspaper Afrika of charges brought against them for printing a cartoon deemed offensive by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The Turkish ambassador to the TRNC administration, Derya Kanbay, had brought the charges against chief editor Şener Levent and journalist Ali Osman Tabak after a cartoon of an ancient Greek statue urinating on Erdoğan’s head was published in an edition of Afrika.

Levent called the court’s ruling to drop the charges of insulting a foreign leader “a historic decision”, and “an important milestone for real independence against Turkey”, France 24 reported.

The chief editor has faced angry mobs for his critical stance to Erdoğan’s Turkey, the only country to formally recognise the breakaway Turkish republic that controls the northern third of the island of Cyprus.

In January crowds gathered outside Afrika’s offices after the newspaper published an article criticising Turkey’s occupation of Afrin, a Syrian enclave that Turkish forces seized from the Kurdish militias controlling them in a military operation last year.

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1 comment to North Cyprus Afrika Newspaper Staff Found Innocent of ‘insulting Erdoğan’

  • Polly Marples

    For once….justice in the TRNC. Of course they are innocent.