CARICATURE OF JUSTICE AND THE EU
Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Oct 23 2014
ORHAN KEMAL CENGÄ°Z
October 23, 2014, Thursday
I have just read that the EU Commission said they had taken note of
the closing of the corruption case in Turkey. I am sure that they took
note of more than just this outrageous legal scandal of covering up
corruption and graft, but they cannot say more.
I am sure they are aware of the fact that Turkey is slipping into an
authoritarian regime at full speed, but the Commission is handling
Turkey as if it were still a candidate country for the European Union.
Their pretense is good for both the EU and Turkey.
As such, being franker may lead to cutting relations, and might be a
gift for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who would feel that he had
got rid of yet another obstacle to his absolute rule.
Having started with the closure of the corruption case, which is of
course a legal “miracle” on its own, despite the existence of very
powerful evidence, documents and so on in the files, so many other
things are happening in Turkey right now showing just how the justice
system has turned into a caricature.
Look, we still have Sevan NiÃ…~_anyan, a Turkish-Armenian writer,
serving his prison time as the only person in Turkey who was given a
prison sentence for building something against town planning codes. Our
very president is now preparing to sit in an illegal place — called
the AK Saray (White Palace) to associate it with the Justice and
Development Party (AK Party). When I say “illegal” I am not referring
to the president’s so-called “impartial” position and his breaching
of it by acting as the spokesperson of the AK Party, as he did in
calling the palace AK Saray. This AK Saray was built in spite of at
least three different court orders saying that construction should be
stopped immediately. Erdogan openly challenged them by saying that
“if you have power, come and demolish it.” In this Turkey, poor
NiÃ…~_anyan is serving and will be serving an indeterminate term in
prison for allegedly illegal construction in Å~^irince, KuÅ~_adası,
Ä°zmir province.
Everyone says that NiÃ…~_anyan turned Ã…~^irince into a paradise with
all the things he erected there, and he is now being called to pay
the price.
Well, not only the NiÃ…~_anyan case shows us the caricature-like
state of the justice system in Turkey. On exactly the same day as an
Ä°stanbul prosecutor closed down the graft probe by saying that he did
not find evidence or the file strong enough to pursue, a family was
giving an account before a criminal court in Ä°stanbul. They are the
Sarısuluk family, the mother and brothers of Ethem Sarısuluk, who was
killed during the Gezi protests by a police officer who fired his gun
and shot Ethem in the head. This police officer brought a complaint
against the family, saying that they were insulting him during the
trial, and the prosecutor launched a case against the family. The
photo in which the whole family was sitting in the dock in court was
a tragicomic picture of the justice system in Turkey. Our extremely
talented prosecutors who somehow managed to close the corruption file
could not find anything in favor of the family and sent them all to
court to be tried.
Exactly when the prosecutors were closing down the corruption file,
police officers, some of whom were on the investigation team into
the corruption scandal, were being transferred to a maximum-security
prison in Silivri. You know they are being tried now as suspects in a
coup attempt against the government, because prosecutors interpreted
the corruption file as a coup attempt against the government.
Well, I am not waiting for the EU Commission to draw a caricature of
our justice system in such a detailed manner, for the sake of holding
Turkey within the grip of the European system, but I am sure they
are aware all of this.