Injustice in Turkish Justice
"In these cases, they tried to create a thornless rose garden by silencing the opposition and intimidating patriotic people with secular principles. After the Ergenekon trial, it's impossible to talk about a justice system free of politics, or public trust in justice."In Turkey 250 defendants; politicians, retired military officers, academics and journalists among them, were given sentences from six months to life imprisonment for their role in the terrorist organization named "Ergenekon"; an organization that exists as an urban legend, but whose supposed existence and purpose is extremely convenient for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party to cite as reason for all those arrests of critics of his regime and his Islamist party.
Celal Ulgen, Turkish lawyer
Turkey's secularist and nationalist organizations were charged with organizing extrajudicial killing and terrorist attacks in past decades, and more recently attempting to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Erdogan. For their part, all the defendants strenuously denied any such conspiracy agenda; there was no Ergenekon conspiratorial group in actual existence for the purpose of carrying out a program such as that described by the prosecutors.
The former chief of the country's armed forces, General Ilker Basbug, sentenced to life imprisonment for his 'role in the conspiracy' lends credibility not to the charges, but the illegitimacy of the trial itself. As head of NATO's second largest military between 2008 and 2010, General Basbug's reputation was that of an intellectual and a moderate. "This was a guy who, when he became chief of staff, was heralded as a kind of democratic philosopher-soldier for the 'New Turkey'", explained Asli Aydintasbas, columnist for the daily Milliyet newspaper.
Linked by the government to supposed involvement in a series of propaganda websites meant to discredit Erdogan's governing party -- to incite hatred against religious and ethnic minorities and to foment fears of militant Islam -- General Basbug was set up as the primary guilty party in a wholesale plan to disrupt society and take the government by force. The end-plan was to mount another military coup, something the Turkish military had embarked upon in the past, to ensure that the legacy of Kemal Ataturk continued.
"The websites had exaggerated news headlines on the threat from fundamentalism in Turkey designed to provoke the people against the executive organ and create an atmosphere of chaos", read the indictment against the general of the websites that had been installed years before he became chief of staff. General Basbug had this to say about those allegations:
"If I am being accused of bringing down the government with a couple of press statements and one or two Internet stories, this is very bitter. If I had such bad intentions, as the commander of a 700,000-strong force, there would have been other ways of doing it."
Sentencing was handed down by a court in a prison complex in Silivri, a western Istanbul province. An elected member of Parliament from the opposition Republican People's Party, the military chief of staff under the current government, a former brigadier-general, suspected of founding a wing of the Turkish gendarmerie, a former army commander, a lawyer who filed complaints against writers for "insulting Turkishness" and a journalist.
Dogu Perincek, chairman of the left-wing Workers' Party, received a 117 year prison term; another opposition Parliament member 13 years, seven journalists were given prison terms between six months to 22 years. Reporters Without Borders, based in Paris, has referred to Turkey as "the world's biggest prison for reporters", ranking Turkey 154th out of 179 countries behind Iraq and Russia in its 2013 World Press Freedom index.
Families were unable to appear at the final hearing; officials blocked access to the Silivri courthouse. Roads leading to the town were closed, preventing busloads of protesters from reaching the area. Security forces erected barricades around the prison compound and on the Silivri highway at checkpoints. Protesters were able to mount their protest only in an open field far from the prison grounds behind a security cordon.
Lawyers protested the security measures as a violation of human and legal rights. They claimed the trial to have been unfair. Courts refused to examine evidence that lawyers claimed would demonstrate close links between the police, the prosecutors' office and judges. The trial a clear enough attempt to unlawfully silence political opponents.
Labels: Controversy, Crisis Politics, Islamism, Propaganda, Turkey
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, August 07, 2013
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