If my
judge sends you to prison, then your judge can act as a higher court and release you. Thus, you have people being taken into custody and arrested for very serious charges like spying and revealing state secrets and then being released upon appeal to a higher court.
At first instance, this seems like a well-functioning legal system that is running smoothly. After all, a court sends someone to prison and upon appeal a higher court sets him free. This is so in all civilized legal systems.
But you may really be totally misled.
Here in Turkey, the situation has gotten out of hand. Quite a few judges and prosecutors are affiliated with political and ideological groups and pass on verdicts not according to the book but according to their affiliation.
Thus, you have a court sending two military officers to prison on very serious charges for revealing state secrets and spying, and then a higher court immediately after releases them. If the verdicts were simply passed according to judicial and legal considerations then fine. But we have seen clearly in this case and in many others cases for quite some time that verdicts are more ideological and serve a certain group or persons.
Even the Constitutional Court, which was regarded as friendly to the government, has come up with some verdicts that may seem perfectly sound, but in fact may well be politically oriented. That is why the prime minister is lambasting the court that he was praising a few months ago.
Innocent people are sent to jail and suffer or hardcore criminals and traitors are set free as judges and prosecutors play an ideological and political game.
This is not just a problem for the government but for our democratic system in general. The government and the opposition have to reach a common understanding that our legal system has collapsed and that we have to rebuild it on strong grounds. The president, if he is really a strong head of state has to seriously become an arbitrator on this issue. We need judges to be OUR judges and not my judge or your judge.
