Same cutting sent to palace as given to police

At the third hearing of the Cumhuriyet trial, Cumhuriyet newspaper’s Executive Board Chair Akın Atalay, who has been held in detention for 330 days on “flight risk” grounds even though he came from abroad and made statement, proved that the newspaper cutting dated 23 May 2015 that one of the witnesses heard at the hearing, Alev Coşkun, took to the police was the same as the cutting attached to the anonymous tip-off sent to the Presidential General Secretariat. Atalay stated that Alev Coşkun, who had said in court that he did not send the letter to the Palace, should be prosecuted for perjury.
 
One of yesterday’s witnesses at the Cumhuriyet trial was an individual who had held a post at Cumhuriyet for years, former Tourism Minister and Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality General Secretary, Alev Coşkun.

On 31 October 2016 on which the Cumhuriyet employees had been arrested at Vatan Police Directorate, Alev Coşkun went to the same building to make a witness statement, taking with him cuttings containing certain headlines not to his liking that had been published in Cumhuriyet newspaper. And it has emerged that he sent the same documents to President Erdoğan along with the letter of complaint about Cumhuriyet’s management.
Alev Coşkun replied in the negative to Attorney-at-Law Tora Pekin’s question, “Are you a journalist?”
To Attorney-at-Law Tora Pekin’s question, “If you are not a journalist, how come you complain having pronounced on the newspaper’s page-setting and news reporting and come to make a statement prepared in this way?” Alev Coşkun first denied submitting the documents and then conceded to this under pressure.

With Coşkun alleging the existence of such rules as “headlines are not to come above the masthead in Cumhuriyet newspaper,” Attorney-at-Law Pekin showed examples of headlines placed beside and above the masthead in years when he was on Cumhuriyet’s management.

DOCUMENTARY SUBSTANTIATION OF PERJURY
Subsequently, Cumhuriyet Executive Board Chair Akın Atalay took the opportunity to pose a question.

Atalay asked, “With this Cumhuriyet Foundation lawsuit pending before the Civil Court of First Instance, an anonymous complaint petition was sent to the Presidential General Secretariat on 22 March 2016. Does he have knowledge of this?”
The presiding judge said that this had nothing to do with the trial. In response, Akın Atalay recalled that they had said in the letter sent to the Palace, “You are our last hope for Cumhuriyet newspaper to be given back to us” and “Please be so good as to intervene and give Cumhuriyet newspaper to us.” Akın Atalay said, “I will prove my point about this letter, which contains very demeaning language which I would be ashamed to utter here, to you here together with the documents he took to the police statement.”

Atalay demonstrated on the BarcoVision in the courtroom that the newspaper cutting dated 23 May 2015 that Alev Coşkun took to the police and the cutting attached to the anonymous tip-off letter sent to the Presidential General Secretariat were the same by placing the documents one above the other.
The notes Alev Coşkun had appended on the documents he submitted during the police statement were the same notes that were on the document in the letter of complaint he sent to the Palace.
Akın Atalay, pointing out that this proved that Alev Coşkun had committed perjury even while under oath and there was a penalty for this, commented: “A trial that will go down in history is being staged against this newspaper. I am taking special care to avoid broaching the civil law case. Had I spoken of it, I would have parroted away like a primary school pupil about the civil law case.”

ONLY ALEV COŞKUN TOOK MONEY

Atalay, also pointing out that Alev Coşkun’s time as member and deputy chair of the board of directors at Yeni Gün A.Ş. ended in 2004, asked the following: “According to Cumhuriyet Foundation’s official accounting records, he took money classified as an attendance allowance, even though nobody else did from among the people who have served as chair, deputy chair, general secretary, general accountant and member since the establishing of the foundation until now. Is this true? I am delving into the motivation for complaining.”

Alev Coşkun, asserting that it was İnan Kıraç and Akın Atalay who made the offer in this respect, said, “I was the one who received the lowest salary or received royalties for 21 years.”