Judicial ideology: A Turkish problem

With last week's appeal from the constitutional court, it was determined that former Chief of General Staff İlker Başbuğ had been subjected to violations of his rights. According to the verdict, the defendant's request for discharge was not investigated efficiently and a detailed ruling was not registered in the past seven months, despite a finalized court case.
On the same day, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) enacted a law to reduce the maximum term of imprisonment to five years.

Based on these two developments, a number of suspects were released in cases that have deeply affected Turkey. Erhan Tuncel, known as the "big brother" in the Hrant Dink murder case, and the young people responsible for the Malatya Zirve Publishing House massacre were also released. Just then, the release decision for over 20 important defendants in the Ergenekon case came through.

As a result of the reflection of the skewed judicial mentality, releases are perceived as acquittals. Imprisonment, which should be an exceptional implementation, has become a substitute for penalty. As laws are not implemented according to people, it would be wrong to ask why those individuals have been released in cases that are still not finalized after seven years of legal proceedings.

However, the release of defendants in the Dink, Zirve and Ergenekon cases has disturbed people, including myself. The remand time that has been adjusted in accordance with the European Union legal framework is not the reason for this.

There are three basic principles of trials:

They should be fast, effective and fair. What is meant by efficiency is for a verdict to be applicable. The criteria for judicial functioning are independence and objectivity. Under the influence of a statist mentality, our judicial system has not yet accomplished these basic qualitative standards for a number of reasons.

This might have led to an enactment of a law that should have been made years ago, but even five years is too long. If a court is not able to convict or release a defendant or collect evidence within five years, there is something seriously wrong and it cannot be assessed according to the identity of the defendant.

İlker Başbuğ has been issued an international travel ban, and the judicial process is not yet over. The same applies for the others too.
Two choices remain: One can display a principled attitude by saying that only "famous" people are exempt from trial and that thousands of people - guilty or not - are kept in prison for longer than five years, and remember that everyone can easily find themselves in such a situation; or one can make personalized political evaluations with an opportunistic attitude.

The courts' ex officio release decisions also indicate a political preference which has put itself at the center of the conflict after Dec. 17.
While İlker Başbuğ was released by the court at the appeal of his lawyer, the ex officio release decisions for Erhan Tuncel and the Zirve defendants were made at a rapid speed. There is seemingly nothing wrong with a court proceeding ex officio, but the "preference" luring from the back is leading us to the same point.

Almost no releases have been made in the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK) case, which through mass arrests have confined a great number of Kurdish politicians. The court in Diyarbakır has denied the appeal to release 91 defendants who have been under arrest for five years. The excuse: The defendants might join the PKK. This is entirely un-judicial and discriminatory.

The young defendants of the Zirve case, who were caught committing murder, are being released without even an appeal; whereas the Kurdish politicians tried under the KCK case are still under arrest for absurd reasons.

All these particularities arouse the suspicion that parts of the judicial system are not objective and that justice is being misused for the sake of setting an agenda. It is as if the courts' course of action correlates with the parallel structure behind the Dec. 17 coup attempt and falls at the center of the conflict.

I think everything needs to be re-established in this country.