The crime of calling a travel agency

During the operation to silence Cumhuriyet, when the Security forces and attorney general’s office could not find any evidence of unlawful acts by our journalists and managers, they tried to use the “ByLock and communication contacts” report which turned out to be full of scandalous information.

The only evidence the prosecutors could present in the accusations against Cumhuriyet at the end of the investigation, was the news and columns reported by our journalists. After their attempts to represent any contradictory (to the current government’s view) news or writings as acts of terrorism were unsuccessful, the prosecutors started to look for additional evidence. As the reason was being provided for the for the “ByLock” investigation,as part of the indictment, the following confession was made: “according to the investigation made by the Chief prosecutor against the members of the media, although the common opinion was of the fact that the actions by the accused were within their freedom of speech, the persons whose identities are clearly identified (as listed above) suspected of communicating many times with suspects using the ByLock cryptographic communication code, used by the FETÖ/PDY terror organization….”

So, the prosecutors were defending the fact that the “news and articles used as evidence in the investigations could have been considered within freedom of speech, if there was no possibility of ByLock communications.” However, ByLock could not be found on any of the phones of the Cumhuriyet employees, because it did not exist. Afterwards, all the communications of the suspected Cumhuriyet employees and their families were greatly scrutinized. But, again, there was no evidence of any relations to the organization. Nonetheless, the prosecutors instructed the Istanbul Anti-smuggling and Organized Crime Department of Police to conduct many more investigations.

 Investigation of everyone in the family….

In order to find some evidence, firstly, the records of communications for 92 stationary and mobile phones of the families (including, fathers, mothers, spouses, and children) of all of the suspects were examined in great detail and and the information on base stations for these phones were determined. At the Special Prosecutor’s office in Ankara, the phone numbers listed in the ByLock investigation and these phone numbers were studied to find any relations but this was not enough…

They tried to find a relation with FETO lawsuit and the people who were involved with the coup attempt on July 15th. In summary, they tried to find a connection between Cumhuriyet writers, managers, family members and the 215,000.00 users of ByLock and hundreds of thousands of FETO suspects. The data they obtained was a ‘communication connection’ which could be used as evidence in a court of law. This data was reported to the Prosecutor’s Office on 25th March 2017.

To call a Travel Agency

In this report, there are lots of allegations which do not make any sense. They reported the travel agency calls of the publisher of Cumhuriyet Newspaper Orhan Erinc; cartoonist Musa Kart and writer Hakan Kara for their vacation plans as a “communication of guilt”. In fact, this travel agency was the one of the first agencies which many people making travel plans would call. We do not prefer to declare this travel agency’s name to protect its commercial standing but the reason they were named in a report at the Directorate General of Security was due to a lawsuit at the Ankara Chief Prosecutor’s Office which was filed in 2014. Moreover, this company is still one of the most active travel agencies in Turkey.

It is an offense to make an appointment with Erdogan’s attorney!

The communication of our CEO Akin Atalay and his associate Faik Isik -who are both attorneys- was also considered as evidence of guilt. There was a claim that an investigation had started at the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office in 2013 on Faik Isik, who for some time was the attorney for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Fenerbahce President Aziz Yildirim. Faik Isik made a speech at Oda TV and confirmed that he did not have any relations with the Cumhuriyet file. He also stated that he has known Akin Atalay for the past 20 years as an associate and even texted him with good wishes when Akin Atalay was arrested. This was a basic human communication but was recorded as an evidence of guilt in the lawsuit which clearly demonstrates the lawlessness and injustices that we have been facing.

About Ibrahim Yildiz

They also investigated the communication traffic of our former Executive Editor Ibrahim Yildiz in that report. They reported his communication with Mustafa Yesil who is the former president of the Journalists and Writers Association;the phone calls with the Cihan News Agency and communications with its general manager; and communications with the Zaman Newspaper and the many journalists or writers who were under investigation.

Downloaded by 215,000.00 people

Davis Keynes, who lives in the U.S. is the developer of ByLock, which is a cryptographic chat application for Android and IOS. ByLock is known as an application which provides cryptographic message and talk access. It is quite difficult to track this application due to these characteristics. ByLock usage is presented as one of the most important proofs of FETO membership. They expressed that the server of the application was in Lithuania and by the access of MIT (Turkey’s Central Intelligence Agency) to that server, they transferred 18 million correspondences and 3.5 million e-mails to Turkey successfully. They also declared that ByLock has 215,000.00 users.

Translated by “Solidarity of Freedom of Ahmet Şık”

How the plot started

The FETO investigation from the experts