Friday, 13 January 2012When CHP chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu was briefed on the arrest of former Chief of General Staff Ilker Basbug last week as part of the Ergenekon inquiry, he turned to his advisers and asked: "Who is next?"
Then, on Tuesday (January 10th) a Turkish court ordered another retired general, Hursit Tolon, to be jailed pending trial in the case.
In a separate case this week, an Ankara court accepted indictments against the last two survivors of the 1980 coup military junta, 94-year-old Kenan Evren, the coup leader and seventh president, and another retired general, Tahsin Sahinkaya, 86, for their role in the September 12th 1980 coup.
But that isn't the end of it: Kilicdaroglu himself is also now under investigation for attempting to influence a trial and insulting a public official based on comments he made after a visit to the Silivri Prison, the site of the Ergenekon trials, on November 9th.
The CHP leader reacted strongly to the charges, stating he would ask parliament to strip him of his immunity.
On January 11th, about 80 CHP MPs also asked parliament to strip them of their parliamentary immunity in protest of a move by a prosecutor to investigate their boss.
Faik Oztrak, deputy leader of the CHP, told SES Türkiye that, the government's reaction to the Kilicdaroglu case explains where all these attacks are coming from.
"Prime Minister [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan described this game as 'what needs to be done has been done,'" he argues, adding, "Unfortunately, today, prosecutors set the political agenda in Turkey."
Oztrak says the party will decide on its next steps against the accusations in the coming days.
For their part, the AKP officials deny influencing the courts, arguing instead that everyone is equal before the law and that the judicial process should be followed.
"As a party we were also faced with judicial decisions in the past, even the threat of closure, but we never insulted the judiciary," Burhan Kuzu, AKP MP and chairman of parliament's Constitutional Commission, told SES Türkiye.
Kuzu says judicial procedures against the opposition have nothing to do with the government, accusing CHP leaders of "just staging a show" due to the party's internal problems.
He argues the CHP is preparing for its conventions this summer and Kilicdaroglu is faced with intra-party opposition.
However, Ilter Turan, president of the Istanbul-based Political Science Association, says it is "shameful" that the government is using old methods against its opponents.
He argues it's not easy for the opposition and former military generals to protect themselves from the judiciary, because technically there is nothing unlawful about what is happening now.
"It's very difficult to stand against the decisions of the judiciary in Turkey. This is a democractic deficit," he told SES Türkiye, adding, however, that in Kilicdaroglu's case, the parliament would probably not lift his immunity for fear of opening the floodgates.
On top of the political tensions, Asli Erdogan, a writer and human rights activist from Istanbul, is concerned about the eroding human rights situation in Turkey.
She says almost every single Ergenekon-related prosecution "seems less like a judicial case and more like another step in a campaign to wipe out the AKP government's opponents, such as Kemalists and the military".
For many years the Turkish people looked forward to the modernisation of the army, she says, but "as a result, they got an army that reports only to the government, not to the public."
"Neither the army, nor the government has yet expressed anything resembling an official apology regarding the killing of the35 Kurdish citizens," she reminds.
As for the Ergenekon investigations, it's getting out of control, she says. |
Friday, 13 January 2012
SETimes
|
|
