Opposition to 12 September among grounds for Can’s detention

CANAN COŞKUN
 
Along with the wave of arrests and detentions in the aftermath the Afrin operation, sixteen people were ordered into detention the night before last by Istanbul Penal Judgeships of the Peace Nos 3, 4, 6 and 8, including 78 Generation Initiative Spokesperson Celalettin Can. Istanbul Penal Judge of the Peace Abdulkadir Ungan, who detained Can, one of the members of the Panel of the Wise at the time of the solution process negotiations with the PKK, on the charge of organisation membership, based his order on intercepted phone calls made in 2016 and articles seized at Can’s home.
 
Outrage over lack of sentences
 
Judge Ungan asserted that the transcripts of Can’s phone calls showed he wanted to organise a pirate protest against the court ruling passed over the 12 September trial.
 
“Paving the way for coupists to be prosecuted” was one of the government’s propaganda tools in the 2010 referendum. And in 2012 the indictment into the 12 September coup was drafted and prosecution commenced of Chief of the General Staff at the time and seventh president Kenan Evren and ex-Air Force commander retired Full General Ali Tahsin Şahinkaya. Ankara Serious Crime Court ruled at the hearing held on 4 May 2017 that the case be abated in view of the demise of Evren and Şahinkaya. Public outrage ensued over the case ending without sentencing.
 
Sending blankets
 
Judge Ungan continued his grounds for the order to detain Can by citing the existence of phone calls attesting to his support for the campaign to send blankets and white goods to residents of Cizre and Sur who had been forced to leave their homes at a time of conflict. Judge Ungan made Can’s comment in a phone call that “they have been organised in the form of the HDK, HDP, Women’s Movement had press” into grounds for detention. Ungan alleged that Can had phone calls “about participating in demonstrations having obtained information about pirate demonstrations.”
 
Judge Ungan stated that Can had participated in and chanted slogans at what he alleged to be pirate demonstrations in connection with the Özgür Gündem newspaper. Ungan argued that Can chanting slogans in the form, “Kurdistan will be fascism’s grave” at demonstrations he took part in was concrete evidence. With transcripts of his phone calls in the file, his chanting of slogans at demonstrations he took part in and articles and photographs seized in the search of his home serving as evidence, Ungan asserted that Can could tamper with this evidence and the evidence had yet to be gathered.