EVEN death cannot stop Turkey’s persecution of journalists, as a court sentenced Kadri Kaya to more than two years in prison on Saturday — eight months after he lost his battle with cancer.

Mr Kaya was the founder of the now banned DIHA news agency and was based in the largely Kurdish city of Diyarbakir in south-east Turkey.

The Batman district Third High Criminal Court sentenced him to two years and one month, ruling that there was no provision for suspending the sentence. Prosecutors claimed to have forgotten to “process” Mr Kaya at a previous hearing.

His trial continued after he died from cancer in October 2018 and he was charged with “deliberately and willingly helping” a terrorist organisation.

He was sentenced along with journalists Erdogan Altan, Mehmet Karabas, Ihsan Bilayak, Mehmet Kaya and Musa Balur, who were accused of the same offences. 

Prosecutors claimed they were sending messages on behalf of “terrorist organisations” under the guise of journalism. 

This included calling for the release of arrested mayors from the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), demanding the right to education in the Kurdish language, the end of military operations and the freedom of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Their journalism was feeding hatred against the Turkish state, prosecutors argued.

Mr Kaya was well respected by his peers, who gave him the name “mamoste,” meaning teacher. 

He worked as the Diyarbakir representative for the DIHA agency for 13 years, until it was closed down by presidential decree under the state of emergency introduced after the failed coup attempt in 2016.

Before working for DIHA, Mr Kaya was a journalist for the Ozgur Gundem (Free Agenda) newspaper, which was also closed down by the Turkish government.

It has been at the centre of a high-profile case which has seen journalists and writers jailed for acting as editor as part of a solidarity initiative.

Turkey is the world’s leading jailer of journalists, with more than a third of the global total.

Accurate figures are hard to ascertain as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denies that Turkey jails government critics for their journalism, insisting all those behind bars are terrorists.

A European Federation of Journalists report in February listed at least 157 journalists in Turkish prisons.