Shortlived joy – no freedom for Aslı Erdoğan and Necmiye Alpay

Citing insufficient evidence for the offence of ‘disrupting the unity of the state and integrity of the country’, the release was ordered of remandees Aslı Erdoğan and Necmiye Alpay, the Publication Consultative Board member journalists of the closed Özgür Gündem newspaper who had been remanded in custody within a criminal investigation into the paper’s journalists and managers. However, the court ruled that the suspects remain in custody for the offence of ‘membership of a terrorist organisation’. Erdoğan and Alpay will be unable to walk out of jail.

The indictment resulting from the investigation launched into the closed Özgür Gündem newspaper’s journalists, managers and consultants has been accepted by Istanbul Serious Crime Court No 23. The court, while accepting the indictment, also ordered Aslı Erdoğan and Necmiye Alpay’s release.

However, it has emerged that the court ordered the release of the paper’s Publication Consultative Board member journalists Aslı Erdoğan and Necmiye Alpay on the grounds of insufficient evidence for the offence of ‘disrupting the unity of the state and integrity of the country’, but ruled that the suspects remain in custody for the offence of ‘membership of a terrorist organisation’. This means Erdoğan and Alpay will be unable to walk free.

Aslı Erdoğan was detained on 19 August and Necmiye Alpay on 31 August on the allegation of organisation membership. Aslı Erdoğan has been in remand for 97 days. Necmiye Alpay, remanded for the past 85 days, spent her seventieth birthday behind bars.

LAWYER’S STATEMENT

Following the court’s decision, Aslı Erdoğan's lawyer Erdal Doğan made a statement to Cumhuriyet.com.tr.

Doğan, indicating that the court had ordered her release for the offence of ‘disrupting the unity of the state and integrity of the country’, but, for the offence of ‘membership of a terrorist organisation’, ruled that she remain in custody, said, “A further judicial murder has been added to this process that we call judicial murder. The investigation itself is a chain of judicial murders. She should have been released from remand for all of the offences on which it was predicated.”

While the Özgür Gündem case has seen the pre-trial remanding of the paper’s Publication Consultative Board member journalists Aslı Erdoğan and Necmiye Alpay along with the paper’s General Publication Manager Zana Kaya and Editorial Manager İnan Kızılkaya are in pre-trial custody, arrest warrants are out for five people.

The prosecution is calling for the handing down of aggravated life sentences to Alpay and Erdoğan for ‘disrupting the unity of the state and integrity of the country’, ‘membership of a terrorist organisation’ and ‘making propaganda for an organisation’.

The hearing into the case will be held on 29 December.


ŞERMİN SOYDAN RELEASED

Dicle News Agency (DİHA) reporter, Şermin Soydan, who blew the lid on the operation targeting Yüksekova and was being held in pre-trial custody on charges carrying a life sentence, has been released.

The third session of the trial of Dicle News Agency (DİHA) reporter, Şermin Soydan, who was detained on 14 May for blowing the lid on the operation targeting Hakkari's Yüksekova Sub-Province in a report with the headline “Here is the ‘secret’ Gever operation document”, was heard at Hakkari Serious Crime Court No 2.

Soydan, who faces charges carrying a life sentence for ‘acquiring confidential documents concerning state security’ and ‘jeopardising the state’s military campaign and resources’, participated in the trial via a video link from Oltu T-Type Closed Prison. At the session attended by Soydan’s family and lawyers, following identity verification, witness İbrahim Aşan was heard.

Subsequently, on being asked if she would give testimony, Soydan said that she would not give testimony until she appeared before a judge.
The court bench, announcing its decision, ruled that Soydan be released subject to pre-trial conditions. The next session is slated for 25 December.

WHO IS ASLI ERDOĞAN?

Erdoğan, born in 1967, finished American Robert College and then the Computer Engineering department of Bosphorous University.

She completed her master’s degree at CERN (Conseeil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire). She broke off her doctorate studies in physics in Rio de Janeiro to become a writer.

Her first book was published in 1994. The author who has been feted in the national and international press won first prize in a contest organised in 1997 by Deutsche Welle with the short story called The Wooden Birds (bunun İngilizcesi burada acaba link konulabilir mi?: http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/wooden-birds) and this story has been translated into nine languages.

Her novel The City in Crimson Cloak was selected for the Marg series by Gyldendal Publications (Norway). In the Silence of Life was selected as the book of the year in 2005 by Dünya Publications.

Part of In the Silence of Life was put to music by Serra Yılmaz at the Piccola Theater (Milan) and made into dance theatre and a ballet.

Her short story The Captive was made into a film in France. Aslı Erdoğan’s works have all been greeted as ‘modern classics’. Such newspapers and journals as Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, die Welt, der Freitag, die Berliner Literatur Kritik have published over a hundred articles and studies about Aslı Erdoğan’s works. Writers such as Ingo Arend, Ruth Klüger and Barbara Frischmuth have written about Aslı Erdoğan. Having been compared to Antonin Artaud and Malcolm Löwry by La Libre Belgique, Aftenposted summed her up in the following sentence, “Just as Joyce is inseparable from Dublin and Kafka from Prague, Aslı Erdoğan will for ever be inseparably attached to Rio.” The works of the author, who has most recently won the Ord i Grenseland Prisen (Words on Borders Prize), continue to be translated into world languages.

Aslı Erdoğan's books

The Shell Man 1994
The Miraculous Mandarin 1996
The City in Crimson Cloak 1998
In the Silence of Life 2005
When a Journey Ends 2000 (Newspaper columns)
Diary of a Perturbed  Woman 2006 (Essays - I)
Once Again 2006 (Essays - II)
The Stone Building and Others 2009 (Short story)

Who is Necmiye Alpay?

Necmiye Alpay was born in Balıkesir's Sındırgı Sub-Province on 23 November 1946. Having graduated at the age of 23 from the Faculty of Political Science of Ankara University, she wanted to continue her studies abroad. Opting do her doctorate in economics rather than politics, she obtained her PhD from Paris-Nanterre University.

12 September events

While on the teaching staff of the school where she was studying, she was arrested in the aftermath of 12 September and sent to Mamak Prison. She spent three years in jail.

Translation and literature

After leaving prison, she moved towards translation and literature. She entered the literary world while among the founders of the Kuram Journal and Ludingirra Journal. It was not long before she took up the post of editor at Sonbahar Journal. She lectured in Turkish at Akademi İstanbul and Yeditepe University for seven years (1996-2003) and wrote articles about language in the Radikal newspaper for six years (2001 - 2007).

Books she has published until now:

Key to Turkish Questions, Metis Publications, Our Language and our Languages / Articles on Practice, Metis Publications, Attempt at an Approach, Kanat Publications, 2005

Books she has translated: Culture and Imperialism (Edward Said), Hil Publishers, Historical Capitalism (I. Wallerstein), On the Intelligentsia (V. I. Lenin), Ottoman Women on the Threshold of Modernity (Madeline C. Zilfi), Tarih Vakfı Yurt Publishers. Violence and the Sacred (Rene Girard), Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (Paul Ricoeur), Metis Publishers, The Death of Socrates (Jean Paul Mongin), Metis Publishers, The Little Philosophers series, 2011, Martin Heidegger’s Cockroach (Jan Marchand), Metis Publishers, The Little Philosophers series, 2012, Diogenes the Dog-Man (Jan Marchand) Metis Publishers,