Judge lets loose while remanding Cumhuriyet’s canteen operator Şenol Buran

Özgür Urfa, lawyer of Cumhuriyet’s canteen operator, Şenol Buran, who has been remanded in custody charged with insulting the president after his comment that he would not serve tea to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was noted down by a police officer on guard duty at our newspaper, has tweeted the judge’s comments prior to passing the remand order.

Şenol Buran, the operator of our newspaper’s canteen, has been remanded in custody by Istanbul Penal Bench of the Peace No 11. Judge Selami Yılmaz, deeming a police officer’s statement sufficient to warrant a remand order, contended that there was an ongoing investigation and there existed the possibility that Buran would pressurise witnesses.

Şenol Buran noted in the statement that he gave at Şişli Police Station the evening before last that he left home in his car on Saturday 24 December to come to the paper’s building in Şişli. Buran, indicating that it took him a long time to find a parking place with many roads having been closed by the police due to President Erdoğan’s participation at the Foreign Economic Relations Council’s General Meeting at a hotel in Şişli, said that he was late for work. Buran said, ‘At about ten past eleven, the security chief approached me and asked why I had been so late. And I told him I had been cruising around the paper for an hour and I had gone to a whole host of places but they wouldn’t let me in. I said that I had left the car in Kuştepe and had made my way here in this cold. At this, the security chief said, “Our president is supposed to be coming, that’s why they’ve closed things. If he comes here to have a tea together with us, then you will serve tea.” Buran, saying he told him he would not serve tea, noted that he was not imputing anything and made no imputations at the workplace.

‘THE MAN HAS PARDONED EVERYBODY AND YOU ARE STILL NOT BEHAVING YOURSELVES.’

The judge who remanded Duran and ordered his jailing rebuked Buran’s lawyer Özgür Urfa, saying, ‘The man has pardoned everybody and you are still not behaving yourselves.’