In an unexpected decision, a Turkish court on Tuesday decided to acquit those accused of "leading" the revolt of Gezi Park, a wave of demonstrations that shook Turkey in 2013, who had been charged with the crime of "attempting to overthrow the Government". It marks the end of Calvary for 16 defendants, of whom three faced life imprisonment and the rest between 10 and 15 years in jail, being accused of "terrorists" by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who appeared as part of the accusation.
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The court manager quickly read the sentence and the perplexity gave way to joy: Everyone acquitted! It was logical after a Kafkian trial plagued by irregularities and in which the evidence of the accusation was quite weak, but not expected. In fact, one of the defendants, Yigit Aksakoglu, who was facing life imprisonment, had confessed to THE COUNTRY having no hope in a positive resolution of the case. In addition, the defense strategy was to extend the view of the trial as much as possible so that the court could not issue its decision on Tuesday.
On the Silivri prison campus , on the outskirts of Istanbul, one of the largest prisons in Europe, there was a large influx from early in the morning. The immense courtroom, the size of a sports center and with the layout of a stadium in Ancient Greece, was presided over by two immense screens so as not to miss the details of the interventions, since from the bottom stands the defendants appeared tiny, and their relatives and relatives had to wave their arms to cross greetings with them. Dozens of defense lawyers sat on the left of the court; on the right, prosecutors, journalists, international observers and numerous deputies, as the opposition went as a block to exert pressure.
One after another, the defense lawyers began to request the floor to request the appearance of new witnesses, complain that they were prevented from contesting the veracity of the evidence, request the audits of the telephone punctures on which the accusations were based (not they have heard during the trial, only their transcripts have been seen) and to denounce that the whole case was built by prosecutors and police officers linked to the brotherhood of Fethullah Gülen who are now in jail precisely because of criminal behavior and evidence manipulation. All these petitions were rejected by the court, which predicted nothing good for the defendants.
And so the court ordered philanthropist Osman Kavala to initiate his final plea. Disgraced after more than two years imprisoned - despite the recent ruling of the Strasbourg Court ordering his release - Kavala had the face of an oil painting by José Ribera: the abundant beard, the sunken cheekbones ... Although he has dedicated his life to cultural and defense issues of ethnic and religious minorities, he was accused of being the brain of Gezi's protests at the behest of the millionaire George Soros (black beast of the new national-popular right), something that the accused called "fiction conspiracy. " Another of the main defendants, Mücella Yapici, argued that she had already been acquitted in a previous proceeding based on the same summary and, then, the court ruled that “Gezi's protests were not an attempted coup d'etat but an exercise of freedom of expression ”, in addition to having been a horizontal movement“ without leaders or organizers ”.
Finally, against all odds, absolution came. The hugs, the tears of joy, the relief of those who looked behind the bars for the rest of their lives.
If the Prosecutor's Office does not file an appeal within seven days, the sentence will be considered final. At least for the nine defendants present this Tuesday in Silivri. Seven others have been tried in absentia because they have been exiled from the country (among them the journalist Can Dündar) and their cases have become a separate piece of the main summary. The court decided to lift the search and seizure order that weighs on them and if they appear before the court their absolution will be completed.
The acquittal has sat badly in some pro-government media who underline in their pieces the damage caused by Gezi protesters. However, recently, sources of the AKP party, in power, recognized this journalist that four years after the attempted coup d'etat and the purges that followed, the time has come to begin to loosen the exceptional legislation approved then and recover certain rights and freedoms Turkey is going through economic difficulties and its main economic partner is still the European Union, but important foreign investors have left the country in recent years due to lack of legal certainty and increasing government control of the courts. In this sense, the sentence about Gezi could be interpreted with a small step back to normal. The next test will be this Wednesday, when a new view of the controversial trial will take place against 11 human rights activists - including Amnesty International's local leaders - who face up to 15 years in jail on terrorism charges.
Arrest warrant against nearly 700 police, military and officials
A.M
The Turkish Prosecutor's Office issued arrest warrants on Tuesday against nearly seven hundred soldiers, police and officials with alleged links to the brotherhood of Islamist preacher Fethullah Gülen, exiled in the United States. Police officers launched raids in various parts of the country and arrested at least a hundred suspects, according to the state agency Anadolu.
The search and seizure orders are directed against 71 alleged Gülenistas in the Ministry of Justice, another 157 in the Armed Forces (of which a hundred are active noncommissioned officers) and another 467 suspected of having rigged the Police access exams. For decades, Gülenista sympathy officials provided in advance to their co-religionists the responses of the oppositions to infiltrate the Administration. In the first Erdogan governments, his party and the Gülenista movement actively collaborated, but subsequently broke the alliance and began a fight that culminated in the attempted coup d'etat of 2016. After this attempt, more than one hundred thousand officials have been purged and more than fifty thousand arrested for alleged links with the Gülenists, now considered a "terrorist" and "coup" organization.
