(MENAFN) After being held in jail in Turkey for almost 600 days, Sahin Alpay a 73-year old journalist has been released conditionally, following an Istanbul court ruling on Friday.
Alleging that he had written columns praising the Gulen movement, Alpay was arrested shortly after the failed July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey. He was charged with "being a member of an armed terrorist organization." Alpay denied the charges.
This January, Turkey's highest court ruled that Alpay and another journalist, should be released due to rights violations. But a lower court controversially failed to implement the ruling and they remained in prison.
Turkey arrested many journalists for charges such as having links to Gulen, expressing sympathies for the country's Kurdish population and others were simply critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
More than 50,000 have been imprisoned and over 150,000 removed from their jobs in the crackdown that followed the coup attempt. Gulen, a one-time Erdogan ally who fled Turkey in 1999, claims he is the victim of a witch hunt.
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