A brief law lesson for Erdoğan

(Were I to start an article saying, ‘Pin back your ears, President’ do you think he would get cross? I have no idea. You can never tell with him, or public prosecutors, either. I cannot work out what they will get cross at and prosecute you for. So, I got nervous. But, there is no other choice, because in this article I want to address him and only him. Hence...)
Pin back your ears, President!
I am of the opinion that you are in need of a brief but most instructive law lesson on certain matters. We know that you did not receive a legal education. But we quite frequently witness you placing yourself in the position sometimes of judge and sometimes of prosecutor and dishing out legal pronouncements.
I mean, were I to dish out such pronouncements, or tradesman uncle Mustafa sounding off in the local coffee shop, or old Ekrem the barber babbling away about everything between clips of the scissors, the pronouncement so dished out would bring neither benefit nor harm to anybody.
But, you are the President. Moreover, you are now a President who is endowed with such great authority and powers.
Sentences that gush forth from your mouth have clout and have consequences. For example, consequences that may darken somebody’s present or even future.
***
If we set out from an example, you will understand better.
Let us take Deniz Yücel. I mean, that young journalist who acts as Die Welt newspaper’s representative in Turkey.
A penal judgeship of the peace detained him and he was shoved into Silvri. He is residing there on his own in complete isolation and has now put a good hundred days behind him.
You roar away about Deniz Yücel at every opportunity. For example, just recently, you came before the cameras on 14 April and roared:
- Deniz Yücel, as a representative of the PKK, as a German agent, ...
My young colleague is in detention but the indictment against him has yet to be drafted. The sentence you have uttered may quite simply only be uttered by a prosecutor in a country in which the rule of law prevails. Moreover, the world does not move just because the prosecutor so spoke. This is because under the rule of law it is quite simply only for the courts to decide whether a prosecutor’s allegation stands.
Well?
If Tayyip Erdoğan gets up and says about somebody: ‘He is a representative of the PKK, a German agent. We are in possession of footage and everything. He is an agent terrorist through and through’ what is to come of it?
For one thing, prosecutors and judges, who appear to have forgotten everything they learnt at the law faculty for fear of being suspended, will quake and rapidly realise what decision it is wished for them to take.
Pin back your ears, President, you are dealing fatal blows to the already wounded law of this country.
Shall I give one more example?
You complain about those who have bolted to Germany and applied for asylum not being extradited to Turkey.
It is expressly stated in the 1951 Geneva Convention to which the Republic of Turkey, of which you are head, is also a signatory that only the courts may rule on applicants for asylum, and political rulerships can most certainly not pass ruling.
What are you saying? That we have withdrawn our signature from beneath that convention? We did not hear about this. I ask, because in replying to German Chancellor Merkel who wants Deniz Yücel to be extradited to Germany, you bragged: ‘This will not happen in any way. Never for as long as I am in this office.’
Once again, I beg your pardon?
Are such decisions no longer being passed by the courts but by the president and the like?
Pin back your ears, President.
Look here, all the matters mentioned in this article fall to the jurisdiction of the judiciary. There cannot be the slightest participation by presidents, and certainly not their influence. That is how things work under the rule of law.
Well, this is what you will have learnt in this article.
You won’t transgress again, will you?