The prosecution witnesses

OK, I’m furious. I’m fed up to the limit and in the dumps, to boot.
The day before yesterday we were lined up in front of serious crime judges for the third time. As “defendants”, three of usin detention, and the rest of us released, pending trial.
In the end, we were able to grab hold of our colleague Kadri Gürsel; four of our dear friends will experience a further 34 “Silivri nights”.
So, what’s next?
I don’t know, we don’t know, we cannot know. We are not undergoing ordinary legal prosecution. This is a political trial and, seemingly, those who hold political power will determine the outcome.
Let it be. If you work at Cumhuriyet and if you carry on your shoulders the responsibility of conducting journalism on the independent media, you have to reckon with incarceration, with police custody suites and with slogging away day and night in the field or at the editorial desk with eyes puffed up from tiredness and making do with a pittance in remuneration so as not to tarnish your profession while meaning well.
If that’s the price, so be it. We’ll pay it.
If this is honour, so be it. We’ll try to be worthy of it. Our endeavour is to be the children of Prometheus, who took the fire, that is the light, from the Olympus gods, that is the rulers, that is took it out of the rulers’ monopoly, and gave it to the people.
We take our example from Mansur al-Hallaj who did not compromise in the least over his ideas even as he was being skinned alive and cried “Ana 'l-?aqq”.
We are people for whom the path means the path of Pir Sultan Abdal, who stood firm on the gallows defiantly proclaiming: “Let turncoats turn; I will not turn from my path.”
We are Cumhuriyet’s journalists.
 
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Anyway.
There was anger, irritation and sorrow. But, the hearing the day before yesterday was also fun.
We burst ourselves laughing; we kept giggling away without letting on to the judges.
How were we not to laugh and giggle?
The prosecution witnesses had their say.
One of them is no less than “Turkey’s best columnist.” He said it himself. On top of this, he is supposedly a “super-experienced journalist.”
He decreed in his testimony, “FETO took over Cumhuriyet. A FETO coup was staged at Cumhuriyet.”
There may be those who think that the “super-experienced journalist” must know a thing or two and has delved away and dug up this truth.
But, he then replied to the question, “Who staged this coup at Cumhuriyet?”
- “Those who brought NurayMert and AydınEngin onto the paper did so.”
Well I never!
Will you take a look at the “super-experienced journalist?” How he dug up the truth in a flash!
İlhan Selçuk took Aydın Engin on at Cumhuriyet in 1992. And he made him editor-in-chief in 1994 and left the paper in his hands. This was not enough, and he started the Claw Mark column without informing Aydın Engin and plonked an article put together out of reminiscences from a journey at the bottom of page five as the first Claw Mark.
In other words, it was our brother İlhan who staged the FETO coup way back in the autumn of 1992. First, we giggled. Then Aydın Engin spoke and put things straight in a single sentence. I have no idea what the judges and the prosecutor, banking on the witness as he was, did and thought.
 
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Oh, and then the prosecution had another witness.
The witness who filed a lawsuit because the Cumhuriyet Foundation Management Board was elected in a legally invalid manner and he was left outside.
He gave a professional lesson to we “rookie” journalists. He expounded at length on how news having to do with religious orders could not be placed and headlines could not be positioned next to or above Cumhuriyet newspaper’s masthead.
From what I could gather from his comments, news is news but if it is news about religious orders, it is to be positioned beneath the masthead. It cannot be enlarged too much. And so on ...
Lesson learnt.
And, from our colleague Akın Atalay’s detailed exposition with proof and examples, we also learnt who wrote the unsigned tip-off letter to the President seeking his involvement in the Cumhuriyet trial.
We were not surprised.
 
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Like I said, we went through a hearing the day before yesterday that, along with its nonsensicalness and capacity to arouse anger and inspire sorrow, was fun.
Now, until 31 October, we “on the outside” will continue to strive to produce a good Cumhuriyet that reports the news truthfully and will miss our friends on the inside.