All eyes will soon turn to the ECHR

Did you read Cumhuriyet’s lead story yesterday, or at least glance at it? If you didn’t read it carefully, that’s a pity. If you did read it, your talk will have inspired today’s Claw Mark title without me penning it.
A brief recap:
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has joined all the applications by detained journalists, not least the Cumhuriyet newspaper staffers, into a single file. It then addressed some questions with no easy answers to the AKP government. It sought a reply by 2 October. They were tricky questions. They were questions about the legal validity of the grounds for the journalists’ detention and that the Minister of Justice, who is supposed to reply to the questions, was incapable of answering, repeating claptrap that inclines those who read it and hear it towards saying, “Chop it up and feed it to the chickens” along the lines of, “But they are not journalists. The number of detained journalists does not exceed two or three. They have been detained for involvement in the offence of terrorism.”
In fact, the AKP rulership did not and could not reply by 2 October and requested additional time, as if it was doing deep research. It was a request for a hefty amount of extra time and the ECHR made do with granting a three-week period. On 24 October, if the government has submitted the reply, so be it, otherwise the ECHR will rule without awaiting those replies.
I am actually in favour of the government replying to those corkers of questions. At least I (we, you, all of us) will get a few days’ fun out of it. We will laugh and mock.
However, whether or not the government replies, the ECHR’s ruling on the detained journalists is imminent. If I am not mistaken, we will have it before this month is out. Perhaps I got it wrong and it will be another week.
And then?
Then, the AKP rulership will become acquainted with the law, the goal of the law, justice, and an independent judiciary. It will be confronted by real law and a real judiciary the like of which it has not encountered for a long time, all the time huffing, “We swear that the judiciary in Turkey is most independent” and delighting at holding the judicial wing hostage with penal judgeships of the peace that have been turned into detention machines and prosecutors who first prosecute and then seek evidence and, if they cannot find it, invent it.


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So, will Turkey abide by the ECHR ruling?
I asked our legal bunch and they replied glibly saying, “The court must comply.” The response did not stop me in my tracks. I asked, “And if the judiciary does not comply?” The answer was roundabout: “The AKP rulership will have announced that it is not going to comply with international treaties to which the Republic of Turkey state is signatory.”
Can it risk doing this?
We will see.
But, if it takes this risk, it will not have sufficed with breaking the ties with the EU and will have also announced that it is breaking the state’s ties with modern democracy.
Well, in that case, what is to become of article two in the Constitution saying, “The Republic of Turkey is a democratic, secular and welfare state governed by rule of law?”
The answer is long. But, there is also a short-cut answer:
Then all eyes will turn to the ECHR, to democracy and to the rule of law.
And it is Turkey that will come to grief.