Constitutional Court ruling does not set precedent according to lower court

CANAN COŞKUN
 
Istanbul Serious Crime Court No 27, which is hearing the Cumhuriyet trial, has argued that the rights violation ruling passing by the Constitutional Court over our Book Supplement Editor Turhan Günay has no applicability to our detained Editor-in-Chief Murat Sabuncu, Executive Board Chair Akın Atalay and reporter Ahmet Şık.
 
Following the Constitutional Court’s ruling that Turhan Günay’s detention in the Cumhuriyet trial constituted a rights violation, our newspaper’s lawyers applied to Istanbul Serious Crime Court No 27 on 12 January for the release of Sabuncu, Atalay and Şık, who are detained pending the same trial. The lawyers, stressing in the application that the application by the other Cumhuriyet columnists and managers being prosecuted in the trial was similar in scope to that of Turhan Günay, noted, “The detention orders are the same, the indictment is the same and the charges and submissions by way of evidence to the file are the same.”
 
The court examined the application and asserted that in individual application rulings a violation ruling over an individual trial did not have absolute binding force in terms of its having an objective effect. It argued that the effect and bindingness of rulings issued as a result of the abstract and concrete oversight of norms and of individual applications was different. The bench, stating that supreme court rulings had general legal bindingness, asserted that rulings passed as a result of individual applications applied solely to the applicant. The bench, claiming that no change had come about in the detention conditions relating to Murat Sabuncu, Akın Atalay and Ahmet Şık, asserted that the rights violation ruling over Turhan Günay had no applicability to the others through broadening its scope and dismissed the application for release by majority vote.
 
“They should be released”
 
Member judge Halit İçdemir, however, dissented to the decision. İçdemir, citing the time Sabuncu, Atalay and Şık had spent in detention, their having fixed addresses, the evidence having been gathered and their not having the possibility to tamper with the evidence, stated that they should be released. İçdemir also dissented to the extension of detention orders at the two sessions of the Cumhuriyet trail on 31 October 2017 and 25 December 2017.