The eight hearing of the so-called “KCK (Kurdistan Communities Union) Press Committee” case against Kurdish journalists has resumed at Istanbul 15th High Criminal Court in Silivri Prison Complex.

46 workers of the Kurdish press, including those for Dicle News Agency (DİHA), Fırat News Agency (ANF), Özgür Gündem, Azadiya Welat, Demokratik Modernite and Fırat Distribution, were arrested in the scope of a KCK operation on 20 December 2011. Twenty among them are under arrest ever since.

The hearing which is also being monitored by many journalists and press workers began with the DIHA (Dicle News Agency) reporter Sadık Topaloğlu's statement of defense.

DIHA reporter Topaloğlu who has expressed himself in his mother language, Kurdish, for the first time during the trial, said he shared the statement of defense previously made by journalist Ertuş Bozkurt on behalf of the journalists on trial.

“The trial of 46 journalists is the most concrete evidence of the fact that the thought has won a victory. I think it is pretty normal that governments can make nothing of this and do not understand us”, Topaloğlu said and underlined that their sense of journalism was centered on the democracy struggle and free and objective journalism independent of governments' dominance.

“It is normal that this sense of journalism disturbs governments for they are aware of the fact that democracy will be the end of the system they have built. Today, they are trying to reduce journalists to silence after murdering dozens of journalists and bombing their workplaces in the past with an aim to prevent the demolition of their system. They are trying to achieve this purpose of theirs by illegalizing our journalistic works, as is also proved by the indictment prepared against us”, Topaloğlu said.

Also reminding of the bombing of the Özgür Ülke (Free Land) paper's office at the night of 2 December 1994, which left one worker of the paper dead and 23 others wounded, DIHA reporter stressed that it was the paper itself but not relevant authorities that revealed the truth on the incident, releasing 15 days after the bombing a 'confidential' document which had instructed the “elimination of the paper” and had been signed by the Prime Minister of the time, Tansu Çiller.