Government stumped for a defence

Alican Uludağ
 
The government has once more failed to submit a defence and played for time in the application made to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over the Cumhuriyet trial in which our newspaper’s Executive Board Chair Akın Atalay and Editor-in-Chief Murat Sabuncu have been deprived of their liberty for 360 days. With the time extension granted by the ECHR ending yesterday, the Ministry of Justice requested a further extension of two weeks from the supreme court in Strasbourg. The ECHR admitted the request and warned the Ministry of Justice, to which it granted an extension until 7 November, “No further application for a time extension will be permitted,” and called on its defence to be forwarded immediately.
 
Cumhuriyet employees Murat Sabuncu, Akın Atalay, Önder Çelik, Turhan Günay, Mustafa Kemal Güngör, Kadri Gürsel, Hakan Kara, Musa Kart, Güray Öz and Bülent Utku, who were arrested in the operation staged on 31 October 2016 and subsequently detained, applied to the ECHR on 2 March 2017. Request was made for the ECHR to examine the application with priority and rule that there has been a violation of Article 5 with the heading ‘Liberty and security’ and Article 10 with the heading ‘Freedom of expression’ of the European Convention on Human Rights.
 
Requested in June
 
The ECHR, deciding in April to prioritise the hearing of Cumhuriyet’s application, in turn requested a defence from Turkey at the beginning of June. The deadline of 2 October was given for the defence. The Ministry of Justice, failing to submit a defence by this deadline, requested a time extension. The supreme court has extended the deadline to 24 October.
 
The additional time granted by the ECHR has ended, but no defence has been forthcoming from the Ministry of Justice. The Ministry requested a further extension by two weeks on the grounds that, “The content of the information and documents underlying the request that will form the basis for opinions is very large.” The ECHR, which extended the deadline until 7 November, gave the reply, “Subsequently, no further application for a time extension will be permitted and, if possible, they should notify their opinions prior to the extended deadline.”
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Hearing on 31 October
 
The Ministry of Justice did however make timely submission of the defence requested by the ECHR in the previous application filed by Turhan Günay. The fourth hearing of the Cumhuriyet trial, in which journalistic activity is on trial and news reports have been placed in the file as if “evidence of crime”, will be heard on 31 October.