Different names, same conspiracy - first anniversary of Ahmet Şık's detention

CANAN COŞKUN
 
Our reporter Ahmet Şık was detained one year ago today on the charge of making FETO and PKK propaganda with his news reports and Twitter posts. In 2011, he also spent one year in jail as part of the Oda TV trial under a conspiracy by prosecutors and judges in the Fethullahist structure and he was acquitted in this trial in April 2016. The similarities between the defences Şık made in both trials serve to prove how political rulerships have viewed him as a “culprit” for his journalistic activities. Had his right to a defence not been usurped in the most recent hearing of the Cumhuriyet trial, he was going to say, “During the hearings in July, a dialogue took place between you, the presiding judge, and me about not knowing each other. Now looking back in the wake of the performance of this court in terms of slaughtering the law, I can say that I was wrong. I am acquainted with you and all the members of your court including the prosecutor. You were present at the OdaTv trials that were initiated as the result of a plot by the Gülen Sect, charging me with being involved in the Ergenekon movement. In that instance your name was Mehmet Ekinci, the prosecutor’s name Cihan Kansız, and the other judges Hikmet Sen and Seyfettin Mermerci.”
 
Journalist Ahmet Şık was arrested and detained on 3 March 2011 as part of the OdaTV investigation over his book “The Imam’s Army” in which he described the Fetullahists’ police formation. Şık was then charged of Ergenekon membership in this investigation, which was later declared to be the Fethullahist structure’s conspiracy. In the indictment drafted by fugitive prosecutor Cihan Kansız, Şık was alleged to have made propaganda in furtherance of the Ergenekon organisation’s aims and goals with the book. It was asserted in the indictment that the Ergenekon organisation had our newspaper set up, took it over and managed it. In the investigation launched against our newspaper 34 days after the July 2016 coup attempt, charges of aiding FETO and the PKK were also raised with our news reports and columns stated to be the grounds. Numbering among the reports cited as evidence within the investigation were Ahmet Şık’s reports and interviews. In the Cumhuriyet trial indictment, a large portion of which was drafted by prosecutor Murat İnam, who stands charged with FETO membership, the reports and interviews made by Şık were alleged to have “served the purposes of terrorist organisations.”
 
Similar indictments
 
The charges raised against Şık in the Cumhuriyet trial indictment resemble those made in the OdaTV indictment. Both indictments took the same route in terms of the charges raised over reports on state institutions and the independence of the judiciary with regard to the important issues on the agenda at the time: “He is targeting constitutional institutions.”
 
From the Cumhuriyet indictment:
 
(With reference to the interview with detained prosecutor Özcan Şişman who conducted the investigation in Adana into the intelligence service trucks)
 
“...he portrayed the intelligence agency as if it were an illegal structure that was cooperating with an organisation or organisations that were engaged in terrorism or carrying out terrorism...”
 
From the OdaTV indictment:
 
(With reference to the book “The Imam’s Army” about the Gülenists’ police formation)
 
 
“It was aimed through the organisational venture that it was planned to publish as a book, by promoting the theses that the Ergenekon trial was a political trial rather than a legal trial and in which constitutional institutions, principally the armed forces and senior judiciary, were targeted, to misinform society and discredit the trial in the public eye. It has been ascertained that in this book venture the attempt was made to portray the Ergenekon investigation and prosecution, which is being conducted within the bounds of the law and with concrete evidence that has until now been gathered from suspects, is a contrivance and concoction being staged by the Gülen brotherhood and thus to discredit it in the public eye by casting grave aspersions at the institutions and employees conducting the investigation and that the final goal was to render the trial worthless.”
 
ALWAYS STANDING UP FOR THE PROFESSION
 
There are similarities between the defence Şık made in the OdaTV trial that started at the end of 2011 and the obstructed statement in the Cumhuriyet trial. The quote from Roland Barthes, “Fascism does not prevent speech, it compels speech” that Şık made in both trials lays bare why political rulerships have targeted him for his journalistic activities.
 
From the Oda TV defence:
 
“According to item four, it is sufficient to speak of a “partisan media” and state that such a media exists to be an Ergenekon member. Also, mention of human rights violations such as “lengthy detention” can also render a person suspect. According to item five, you can be accused if what you write accords on one occasion with the defences of Ergenekon trial defendants. As to number six, it is now forbidden thanks to the National Media 2010 document to criticise the incorrect and unlawful acts of the prosecutors and police officers who are conducting the Ergenekon operation.”
 
From the obstructed statement:
 
“The chain of investigations/trials that are now acknowledged to have been conspiracies but the entire onus for which the AKP, under the coercion of the power it has usurped, has placed on the Gülen Brotherhood having concealed the criminal partnership, were also assigned an important role in this design. For, just as nowadays the endeavour is made to render those declared to be enemies ineffective by calling them “FETOists”, the word in vogue at that time was “Ergenekonist”. Even if those singled out are not detained, their silencing was wished for through character assassinations for which the media acted as hatchet men.”
 
From the Oda TV defence:
 
“In fact, you, too, know that this trial that is being conducted in the absence of justice and the law and with false and concocted documents is bogus, for show and invalid. It is not a legal prosecution. On the contrary, it is a political prosecution. And, if you cannot convict me, you must hunt down those who devised this plot, the real criminals, and convict them. What is incumbent on you is not to try me but to expose who this brazen-faced plot was hatched by. You, too, know that the charges against me are all lies. Such concoctions are always made in oppressive regimes and dictatorships in which the law is annihilated along with freedoms and statutes are emasculated and made unrecognisable. Tyrants in such places say through the his-master’s-voice media that “they are terrorists.” Partial-dependent officers in such places who are uninformed by rights, the law and justice detain “terrorists” such as me. Certain media outlets in such places become policemen, prosecutors and judges and assume the garb of the hangman. They apprehend, charge, convict and execute.”
 
From the obstructed statement:
 
“This operation, backed by political powers, has been conducted by members of the judiciary who follow orders rather than the rule of the law, and by the media who obeys a political gang. The lies that are attempted to be placed in this piece of scrap called the indictment as evidence were dictated to these ‘media hitmen’ weeks before the operation itself. The charges, which morphed into official lies, were popularized on the social media first, and then on the internet sites of the mafia media, their newspapers and television stations.”
 
Exonerated before history
 
The European Court of Human Rights convicted Turkey in the individual application that Şık made over his detention in the Oda TV trial. As to the application that Şık has made over his detention that is currently continuing, the decision is awaited. As in his first application, Şık has applied for declaration that his personal liberty and security together with his freedom of expression have been violated. All the judges and prosecutors and many of the police officials who served in the OdaTV investigation and prosecution have been expelled and detained or are on the run. Şık, who had said, “Those who set up this plot will go to jail,” was acquitted last November in this trial that had been filed against him.
 
From the Oda TV defence:
 
“Even though history has been overturned once more with this trial, it tells the story of a rulership that remains in place unchanged. It proves once more that every force which demolishes the old and that which preceded it harbours within it the seeds of that which it overthrew. It is bringing the techniques of psychological warfare to life through the media that is pretty adept at assuming the shape of the receptacle in which it is placed and rendering democratic opposition ineffective. Those in opposition are imprisoned under illegalities dressed up as legal through the intermediation of the police and judiciary. That is, the methods of the deep state, claimed to be under investigation given the name Ergenekon, still have currency. Just its owners have changed, that is all. But, you must know that I and those of a like mind, that those who lend an ear to the voice, not of their master, but of reason and conscience, will, just as to the old one, remain in opposition to this new Ergenekon that uses the same methods. It would consequently be beneficial to repeat once more what everyone knows. There has remained absolutely no crime that has gone unaccounted for in history. It will not go unaccounted for this time, either. History will put everything and everyone in the places they deserve to be. Some of you for what you have written and said and some of you for the decisions you have passed.”
 
From the obstructed statement:
 
“We, who have stood upright and with a clear conscience before you since the very first day, as journalists strongly adhering to the ethical principles of our profession have been absolved by history. Yet it is impossible to say that history will pass a favorable judgement on you. I have no doubt that you will sentence each of us to penalties predetermined somewhere else entirely. But you should know that carrying out directives under the wings of a hierarchical chain will never be able to exonerate you from your responsibilities.”