Witnesses who are not witnesses

The trial under an indictment that is not an indictment continues. Cumhuriyet newspaper’s columnists and journalists have been incarcerated for nearly a year. Ever since appearing before a judge, they have battled on until today embroiled in such oddities as the restaurant where the son of the parquet fitter who changed the parquet in one of their homes dines, home-delivery pitta ordered on a birthday and a travel agency called about a holiday. An expert who was not an expert was consulted. It defied comprehension how a young engineer can be commissioned as an expert on newspaper headlines and coverage. This is another oddity that has passed into oblivion. It was now surely the turn of witnesses who were not witnesses. The ongoing civil law case into the foundation management voting is no secret, after all. One of the parties to that lawsuit, former foundation member Alev Coşkun, stated in his testimony that he could not understand why this civil law case was the subject of penal proceedings. When confronted with somewhat compelling accusations that he took two copies of the paper to the police and complained, he was stumped for an answer. However, whatever the circumstances, it remains unclear what his reason is for acting as witness in these penal proceedings.
As to the other witness, Rıza Zelyut, his desire was most surely to excel in completing the series starting with a charge that is not a charge and an expert who is not an expert by being a witness who is not a witness. For one thing, he had no knowledge or standing that would call for him to be a witness in the indictment or at the trial. He has written certain articles in which he has sounded off about Cumhuriyet and which constitute his personal views. He has neither concrete knowledge nor evidence. But, the way he hammed it up, he gave truth to Andy Warhol’s pronouncement, “One day everyone will have fifteen minutes of fame.”
Now, even those who had never heard his name in their lives know that in his day he heaped praise on Gulenist schools and received an award from the Journalists and Writers Foundation. Even worse, everyone became aware of the article in which, while Ahmet Şık was languishing in incarceration under a Gulenist plot, he went out of his way to bow before the Gulenists for them to caress his head by proclaiming Fethullah Gülen to be the greatest nationalist in Güneş newspaper.
Come out, will you, and say that an operation has been conducted against Cumhuriyet since 2010, and then trot out an article in 2011 while cosying up to the Gulenists. When questioned, say that you were pressurised into it by your boss. Then, mired in these contradictions, crow on saying, “I am Turkey’s best columnist.”
Does the Turkish judiciary have plenty of time on its hands? Do people’s lives matter so little? Did they devote their lives to the law and knock themselves out for tens of years at law faculties so that the prosecutor could bring proceedings on this nonsense alleged to be charges and so that the court bench could spend hours listening to this vacuousness?
This trial falls apart as it continues. Every hearing brings us into acquaintance with a new oddity. If you still want students to opt for law faculties and do not want fresh graduates to lose hope and gravitate towards other professions, end this comedy of oddities at last.
Among the anger, we are delighted at Kadri Gürsel’s release. Nobody has been capable of explaining from the first day why he was detained. We want to meet up with our other colleagues, too, on 31 October. I hope no need remains to hear these odd characters who have medals from Gülen and are pressurised by bosses into writing. We cannot hear justice for their wailing. Let their wails now subside and the sound of justice fill courtrooms.