Nordic Monitor

2) The journalist’s account was later hacked by a group believed to be working for the Turkish government’s intelligence agency.

3) Tuncay Opçin, a veteran investigative reporter who faced dozens of defamation charges for allegedly insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had been investigated by Turkish prosecutors since 2014.

4) Most of the charges against him involve alleged insults of Erdoğan in comments and articles he wrote on Internet. Prosecutors also charged him in several cases under abusive anti-terrorism legislation with coup plotting as part the government’s crackdown on critical journos.

5) As of today, 235 journalists remain in Turkish prisons, mostly on terrorism charges, and many more have faced criminal investigations, trials and convictions on dubious charges and flimsy evidence. He is one of 152 journalists living in exile who are wanted for arrest.

6) The Erdoğan government started to weigh in on cases against Opçin in 2014, but the real heat came a year later with several complaints filed by Erdoğan for defamation and libel.

7) Having consolidated his grip on the judiciary with control of key judicial council the HSYK (now renamed the HSK), which decides on promotions, assignments and disciplinary actions for judges and prosecutors, the Erdoğan government has started to abuse the criminal justice.

8) Journalist Opçin had to leave the country on March 28, 2015 to avoid jail time on fabricated charges. But he continued to write and speak out from the United States.

12) Opçin was already facing another defamation charge, again an alleged insult of President Erdoğan, following a complaint filed by Erdoğan on June 12, 2015. With the fresh complaint, his case file was merged with the new one under case file No. 2015/78613.

13) The purported criminal evidence was a simple tweet posted on June 15, 2015 by the journalist, who said, “The renovation of Taksim Square could not be done because the crazy guy in the palace did not give up on the Gezi protests.”

14) He was referring to anti-government protests in the summer of 2013 where residents rallied against a government project in Istanbul’s historic Taksim district that would have destroyed one of the few remaining green spaces in the mega city.

15) The prosecutor claimed the term “crazy” constituted aggravated insult against the president, went beyond tolerable criticism & must be punished with prison time. He asked investigators to gather information on Opçin, which was seen as a vindictive campaign to punish criticism

16) Police chief Aksu wrote back to the prosecutor’s office in July, telling them that the information about the journalist’s email account should be obtained from Microsoft Corporation A.Ş., a Turkish affiliate of Microsoft.

17) He later sent a letter on September 2, 2015 to the Microsoft office in Istanbul, seeking contact and identity information about Opçin.

20) Tepe, who appears to have been frustrated by failing to catch Opçin, wrote to the police on May 10, 2016, asking why their investigation into the journalist had failed to make any substantial progress.

22) On July 11, 2016 prosecutor Tepe found a face-saving measure to get himself out of the picture and avoid the wrath of Erdoğan by referring the investigation to another prosecutor on pretext that journalist lived out of his his jurisdiction area.

23) Perhaps he knew that from the start but did not want to exercise that option, hoping that he would be able to deliver what Erdoğan’s lawyer asked him to do.

25) He suggested the journalist might have been involved in a failed coup, when he in fact had left Turkey long before the attempt. Gümüş handpicked prosecutor Ramazan Öksüz to investigate the journalist.

26) The document lays bare of how the judicial system works under the political directives of the Erdoğan government and how defamation charges were quickly converted into more serious criminal offenses as part of a campaign of intimidation against journalists.

27) After failing to obtain information about the Opçin’s email account from Microsoft, the Erdoğan government this time appears to have resorted to illegal hacking into his account by contracting the job to Ayyıldız Tim, a Turkish nationalist hacker group linked to spy agency.

28) The group publicly declares its support for Turkish intelligence agency MIT and its chief Hakan Fidan on its Facebook account. The group has hacked a number of websites in the United States, Israel and other countries and has seized social media accounts of Erdoğan critics.

29) Opçin’s email and social media accounts were hacked on July 14, 2016, and some of his private communications were shared publicly by the hacker group. Speaking to Nordic Monitor, Opçin said the hacking was traced to a location in Turkey’s western province of Izmir.

30) He said he had continued to use Turkish mobile carrier Turkcell for some time after he moved to the United States and that his account’s security verification was being done through this carrier.

31) He tried to get his account back but that the security code that is supposed to be transmitted to his registered phone did not come from Microsoft. despite repeated attempts. Perhaps the code came in but was intercepted or the registered phone was replaced with a burner.