What I like about this is that the newspaper isn’t taking Erdogan’s threat sitting down, telling Erdogan they will continue to expose him and he will not get away with sending weapons to Syria. They say he will pay a heavy price for this crime:
TIMES OF ISRAEL – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened an opposition daily which published footage allegedly showing trucks belonging to the state intelligence service carrying weapons to rebels in Syria, vowing it will pay a “heavy price.”
“The slander against the National Intelligence Organization and the illegitimate operation (against MIT trucks) is an espionage activity at one point,” Erdogan told state-run TRT television late Sunday. “This newspaper was also involved in this espionage activity.”
“The person who made the story will pay a heavy price. I will not let him get away with it,” said the president, who has threatened other media outlets in the run-up to this week’s tense parliamentary election.
The footage published on the opposition Cumhuriyet daily’s website on Friday shows inspectors searching a metallic container watched by security officers, a prosecutor and sniffer dogs.
The daily claimed the trucks were carrying mortar shells, ammunition for light and heavy weapons as well as hundreds of grenade launchers hidden under boxes of antibiotics marked as “fragile.”
Turkish prosecutors swiftly opened an investigation into the daily on charges of “obtaining information on state security,” “political and military espionage” and “propaganda for a terrorist organization.”
Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Can Dundar hit back the Erodgan, tweeting, “We are not civil servants but journalists. Our duty is not to hide the state’s dirty secrets but to call it to account in the name of people.”
“The person who committed this crime will pay a heavy price,” he added, referring to the president. “We will not let him get away with it.”
While I like their moxy, at the end of the day I fear there isn’t much this newspaper will be able to do if Erdogan brings down the weight of his government on their heads.