This is the Guardian.

Today a trial in Istanbul and a verdict on Turkish democracy.

The

Towards the end of April in the biggest court house in Europe,

Istanbul's Justice Palace.

Defense lawyers stood to give their final statements in a case that's come to be known

as the Guzipark trials. I cannot forget the chance atmosphere over there.

It was a day of mainly statements, defense statements from the lawyers.

All the lawyers and all the defendants made amazing speeches, amazing defenses.

The handing down of the verdict, a couple of days later, was closely watched around the world.

It was very crowded. There was a lot of support both from sort of regular Turkish citizens,

but also sort of journalists, lawyers, foreign observers, people from the European Parliament,

some ambassadors I think.

Semmy Kent, today in focus producer, was following the case.

The defendants, they were eight of them in total, all who you could kind of loosely

describe as human rights activists were accused of violating Article 312 of the Turkish penal code.

Okay, and what's that?

It's trying to violently overthrow the government.

I'm coming towards the end. I felt butterflies in my stomach. I mean, I was getting

quite nervous waiting for what the verdict would be. The judges retired for about 45 minutes,

as one lawyer involved in the case said to me, about five minutes for each defendant,

and then announced their decision.

...