{"id":2194,"date":"2016-09-09T09:51:30","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T09:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2194"},"modified":"2016-09-14T12:02:59","modified_gmt":"2016-09-14T12:02:59","slug":"as-the-turkish-government-acknowledges-an-overdose-in-post-coup-probes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2194","title":{"rendered":"As the Turkish government acknowledges an overdose in post-coup probes\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

By MURAT YETK\u0130N
\nH\u00fcrriyet Daily News<\/em><\/p>\n

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m said on Aug. 8 that the government would establish \u201ccrisis desks\u201d in order to hear complaints about \u201cunfair\u201d detentions, suspensions and dismissals from office in the probes following the bloody failed coup attempt of July 15.<\/p>\n

\"Clothes,<\/a>
Clothes, weapons and tanks are abandoned on the Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul. (Gokhan Tan\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The move comes amid criticism inside and outside Turkey that the probes pursuing followers of the U.S.-based Islamist scholar Fethullah G\u00fclen, accused of being the mastermind behind the coup attempt, have morphed into a wider witch-hunt. There are rising criticisms saying the detentions and dismissals are going far beyond the coup attempt and suspected G\u00fclenists who might have been linked to the plot, and have started to affect many unrelated opponents of the government – from leftist teachers to lawyers.<\/p>\n

Indeed, even President Tayyip Erdo\u011fan himself has said the media should stop wildly labelling people \u201cG\u00fclenists\u201d at will – a tendency particularly seen in pro-government media and social media accounts. The word in Ankara is that Erdo\u011fan made that comment after hearing that a professor of medicine in Ankara\u2019s Hacettepe University Hospital was dismissed based on slander by two jealous colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cSlander\u201d is actually the word used by social democratic main opposition Republican People\u2019s Party (CHP) leader Kemal K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu to refute a report in the pro-government daily Sabah on Aug. 8, which had claimed that four CHP deputies had visited G\u00fclen where he lives in Pennsylvania before the 2015 election.<\/p>\n

Categorically denying the claim, K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu said he had never asked any of his MPs to visit G\u00fclen, and after talking to them himself he also understood that they did not go of their own accord. He said they would now open libel cases against the columnist and newspaper in question, demanding that they prove their claim.<\/p>\n

The CHP head said the claim amounted to slanderous \u201cmanipulation\u201d aiming to associate the party with \u201cthose affairs\u201d – implying G\u00fclenist links.<\/p>\n

There is also a debate going on within the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) regarding party members with G\u00fclenist ties. After all, G\u00fclen and his followers in the state apparatus were long a close ally of the AK Parti until around 2012-13. H\u00fcrriyet writer Abdulkadir Selvi on Sept. 7 wrote about<\/a> the internal AK Parti debate regarding the G\u00fclenists, which raises the question of whether the government is preparing to slow down the investigations.<\/p>\n

This may be an acknowledgment that the dose of the post-coup attempt investigation up to now might have been heavier than originally intended. There are indeed concerns about the possible dilution of the probes if they are spread too thin, \u201cburning the wet together with the dry,\u201d as the Turkish proverb goes.<\/p>\n

The comparison I made (HDN, “When the innocent suffer along with the guilty” Sept. 8, 2016) between the current situation and the Ergenekon and Balyoz cases of a few years ago was found unfair both by people tried – and victimized – in those cases and G\u00fclen sympathizers. Fair trials, distinguishing between the innocent and the guilty, are needed in order to increase the quality of democracy in Turkey, and to truly honor the defeat of the July 15 coup attempt, which was achieved by the will of the people and the parliament.
\n
\nWhen the innocent suffer along with the guilty<\/strong><\/p>\n

(September 8) There is a handy expression in Turkish. The chicken translation of it reads as \u201cthe wet burns together with the dry,\u201d referring to wood burning in the fireplace. It basically means \u201cthe innocent suffer along with the guilty.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is a particularly well-known expression in Turkish because it can be applied to many examples over our 1,000-year history in this region.<\/p>\n

Today it could be used to refer to the ongoing probes following the July 15 bloody coup attempt.<\/p>\n

There is little doubt that the source of the coup attempt was U.S.-based Islamist preacher Fethullah G\u00fclen and his followers nestled in the Turkish state apparatus. At least some of the 3,000 officers fired from the military amid ongoing probes are known members of the network. The National Intelligence Agency (M\u0130T) is still working on an encrypted communication system that the plotters had been using in the network both inside and outside the military.<\/p>\n

Denouncing it as the \u201cFethullahist Terror Organization (FET\u00d6),\u201d the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) government, which had previously been close to the G\u00fclenists, is now suspicious of everything its erstwhile allies touched. The number of people suspended from public office now exceeds 80,000, almost half of whom have already been fired. On Sept. 7, the names were announced of 41 businesspeople whose properties have been confiscated or frozen by the government on accusations of financing FET\u00d6. A number of journalists and writers have been arrested and detention warrants have been issued for many others.<\/p>\n

In the last two weeks there have been complaints from different parts of society that it is not only alleged supporters of G\u00fclen, or those with links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party (PKK), that have been targeted. People simply known to be opponents of the government have been detained, arrested, suspended or fired from their jobs on accusations of being G\u00fclenists or having links to the failed coup attempt.<\/p>\n

Kemal K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu, the leader of the social democratic main opposition Republican People\u2019s Party (CHP), which has taken a clear stance against the coup attempt together with the government, has said it is a critical mistake for the government to try to put all its opponents in jail in the wake of the coup attempt, taking advantage of the state of emergency.<\/p>\n

Even President Tayyip Erdo\u011fan himself has also said that accusations circulating in the (particularly pro-government) media about certain people being \u201cFET\u00d6 members, whether related or not\u201d are counterproductive.<\/p>\n

The problem of \u201cburning the wet together with the dry\u201d is that if you want to save the wet, you have put the fire out and the dry ends up getting saved from being burnt as well.<\/p>\n

Turkey recently experienced this during the Ergenekon and Balyoz probes and cases. Back then, pro-G\u00fclen police officers, prosecutors and judges were at the helm and tried to put everyone they thought was against the government – or rather against their own group interests – in jail, handing out disproportionate punishments with fabricated evidence and sometimes not even giving suspects the opportunity to defend themselves.<\/p>\n

The result is that everyone who was targeted in those cases has now been acquitted, despite the fact that under normal circumstances some of them might well have received jail sentences.<\/p>\n

In order not to repeat that history, the government must show maximum care not to make the innocent suffer along with the guilty and respect the principle of a fair trial. Indeed, if it does not do so, the situation may end up leading to coup plotters with blood on their hands walking away freely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By MURAT YETK\u0130N H\u00fcrriyet Daily News Turkish Prime Minister Binali Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m said on Aug. 8 that the government would establish \u201ccrisis desks\u201d in order to [more >>>]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2195,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2197,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194\/revisions\/2197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}