Should ‘sons-in-law’ go to jail?

By Aydın Engin

Yayınlanma: 11.06.2017 - 16:38
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The debate started with Istanbul Metropolitan Mayor Kadir Topbaş’s son-in-law, Ömer Faruk Kavurmacı, and is continuing with AKP founder and heavy cannon Bülent Arınç’s son-in-law, Ekrem Yeter.

Both sons-in-law, thanks to their good relations with the Gülen Brotherhood in the past, were arrested, placed in pre-trial detention and then released a short (but very short) while later. They have been released pending (supposedly) their trials.

The first is said to have trouble sleeping and has been released on condition that he attend at a police station and sign and cannot do things like travel abroad.

For the other, no need was even felt for a tangible reason. The state of the evidence, his having a fixed residence and the lack of flight risk were deemed to be sufficient, and he was released.

If people about whom there is no concrete evidence of direct participation in the coup attempt and who have not been determined to have later acted in support of the coup attempt, but who are in proximity to the pseudo-religious organisation once known as the ‘Brotherhood’ and now as ‘FETO’, are absolutely to be tried, should they be held in detention pending trial or not?

Anyone with a little legal culture and having the barest grasp of the basic rules of penal law would unhesitatingly say in response to the above question, ‘Their detention was wrong in the first place.’ Prosecutors, if they are in possession of sufficient evidence, open an investigation, draft their indictment and submit it to the court; if the court finds the indictment to be serious it accepts it and initiates the trial. If in the end a crime is found to have been committed and a custodial sentence is imposed, the defendants are taken into custody and imprisoned. Otherwise, they are acquitted.

It is this straightforward.

This is not what happened and both sons-in-law were first arrested and then placed in pre-trial detention by court order (It would be more correct to say ‘penal judgeship of the peace’ rather than ‘court’). Having spent a few days in jail, they were released, once more by order of the ‘penal judgeship of the peace’.

I my view, the decisions to release the sons-in-law pending trial complies with both the Turkish Penal Code and the law and also justice.

But, both decisions give rise to pangs of conscience.

Why?

The answer lies in questions that can easily be lined up.

I could well ask one by one for each of my thirteen dear colleagues on the inside. I will suffice with one of them.

Why is Akın Atalay in detention?

No, not because he is my very old friend; not because he is one of my long-standing lawyers to whom I would without batting an eyelid grant powers that I would not even give to my father; not because he is my newspaper’s official in whom the most powers are vested. When Cumhuriyet’s columnists and managers were first arrested and then detained, Akın Atalay was abroad. With his profound legal knowledge and rich experiences of ‘AKP law’, he knew that he would be detained. Fully aware of this, and without a moment’s hesitation, he returned to Turkey.

Now ...

Reply, oh, judges slapping orders at penal judgeships of the peace, oh, prosecutors with law faculty diplomas lending their signatures to nonsensical indictments, oh, individual dubbed ‘Chief’ who considers the presidency to be the head judiciary and issues fatwas like, ‘I will not release him over to them ... He will never be released for as long as I hold this post’:

Why is Akın Atalay in detention?

I will continue:

You may not care for what Nazlı Ilıcak writes. I know there are plenty of unliked people. So, are these legal grounds justifying her detention? Or, did you see her steering a tank on the night of 15 July, or something?

Ahmet Altan, Mehmet Altan, Murat Aksoy, Şahin Alpay ... Well, I cannot list them all and everybody here.

I ask: Why were these colleagues of mine detained?

Note: I am not asking why they are still in detention. I am asking why they were detained.

Because they are not Kadir Topbaş’s or Bülent Arınç’s sons-in-law?

Do you have another reply?

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/koseyazisi/758495/_Damatlar__hapse_mi_girmeli_.html

 

 


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