Judge in Turkish-Cypriot newspaper case quits

The judge who tried the men who attacked Turkish Cypriot daily newspaper Afrika after it likened the Turkish invasion in Syria to Ankara’s occupation of Cyprus has resigned, it emerged on Friday.

Tacan Reynar announced his resignation on Facebook.

“I cannot continue to work under the current conditions, there is no point nor meaning in continuing to do my duty amid this state of affairs,” he said.

Reynar was also the judge handling a case against Afrika after it had published an ‘insulting’ cartoon depicting a Greek statue urinating on the head of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Another case he was handling was one concerning the behaviour of a Turkish settler, Bertan Saroglu, a member of the Revival Party, against politician Dogus Derya, who sided with Afrika.

Reynar said he planned to emigrate to Canada.

“There are a lot of things I can talk about, write, and share,” he said, as reports said he had been receiving threats and abuse and was under police protection.

Six men in the north were sentenced to between two and six months in prison for the attacks against Afrika in January.

The head of Turkey’s ruling party AKP’s supporters from the Hatay province in southern Turkey, Mehmet Ipek, was sentenced to six months, along with another man. Two men were sentenced to three months, another man to two and another to four months.

It is understood that the attackers were later released by the probation council.

The six men had been arrested following the protests and demonstrations outside Afrika.

A group of angry demonstrators attacked Afrika after the daily likened Turkey’s Afrin operation in northern Syria to Ankara’s occupation of the north. Erdogan had called on his “brothers” in north Cyprus “to give the necessary response”.

Protesters threw rocks and eggs at the building smashing windows and brought the newspaper’s sign down, causing significant damage.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.