Kaboğlu gives a law lesson in court

A further eighteen academics charged with making terrorist organisation propaganda for signing the peace declaration appeared before judges yesterday at Istanbul Serious Crime Courts No 33 and 36 in trials filed individually against them. Numbering among the academics on trial were Professors İbrahim Kaboğlu, Ayşe Durakbaşa, Yüksel Taşkın, Erol Katırcıoğlu and Assistant Professor Dr. Özgür Müftüoğlu, who were dismissed from Marmara University under a decree with the force of law, and Prof. Dr. Taner Gören, expelled from Istanbul University.

 A large number of spectators including academics and students observed the hearings as if listening to a lecture at Istanbul Serious Crime Court No 36 where Prof. Dr. Kaboğlu was standing trial. Presiding judge Hakan Özer noted in the course of Kaboğlu’s identity check that his dismissal was public knowledge. Kaboğlu retorted, “Let us not say dismissal. Let us say, ‘person named in the list annexed to a decree with the force of law.’ I am not only unable to work at Maramara University, but I cannot go to Sorbonne because my passport has been confiscated.” With presiding judge Özer reading the charges and asking, “There is no need to read them all, is there?” Kaboğlu replied, “There is no need. Even that much is hurtful.”

 Kaboğlu said in his address that he described as being a “preliminary defence” that the peace declaration was the exercise of collective freedom. Kaboğlu, recalling that the individual trials had been filed two years after the declaration, said he had been summoned to make statement at the public prosecution the day after the decree with the force of law in which he was expelled had been promulgated. Kaboğlu, inquiring whether or not this was a coincidence, indicated that these trials would not have been filed if the coup attempt had not taken place. Kaboğlu pointed to the political nature of the trials given that they were filed immediately prior to the announcing of the State of Emergency Investigation Commission’s first decisions and said, “This is a state of emergency trial.” Kaboğlu, saying that the State of Emergency Investigation Commission had been prevented from functioning by being deprived of a chair for two months, asked, “You deem those it is conducting procedures into criminals. If so, why do you establish the commission?”

 Lynching goes unpunished

 Kaboğlu, asking if the attempted lynching of the signatory academics had to do with the lack of punishment, said, “The people who approved the declaration are being subjected to a lynching campaign that verges on denial of the right to life. Absolutely no action is being taken against people who have come to the point of procuring their murder.” Kaboğlu, mentioning the trial in the USA in which Reza Zarrab is a witness, continued, “The theft of labour is not the faculty members’ problem, the theft of labour amounts to the non-fulfilment of our obligation to future generations. Denying the faculty members of the opportunity to work anywhere in the world, never mind Turkey, is to prevent them from serving humanity. Those who were unable to prosecute Zarrab here are prohibiting those who approved the declaration from going abroad.”

 Police officers to be summoned

 With lawyer Arzu Becerik calling for an immediate acquittal ruling, the other lawyer, Metin İriz, sought the hearing as witnesses of the relevant police functionaries implicated in the error in the declaration’s English text. The bench granted this application, too. The bench dismissed the application for the immediate acquittal of the ten academics it was trying. The court adjourned the hearings until 26 April 2018, ordering the bringing to the court of the documents in connection with the lawyers’ application for joinder of the cases with the cases brought against the four academics prior to the trials in question. The hearings of the eight academics on trial before Istanbul Serious Crime Court No 33 were adjourned until 24 April 2018.

 http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/turkiye/890918/Baris_bildirisine_imza_attigi_icin_hakkinda_dava_acilan_Kabaoglu_ndan_mahkemede_hukuk_dersi.html