MESOP : THE AKP – THE PKK & LIBERTY OF SPEECH & EXPRESSION (GIT REPORT)

Simons[1] Living in Bosphorus – Yıldıray Ogur  – By 22 March 2016

There was a fire set in the Kartal Aydos Forests on 25 August 2015. Tuzla Infantry School was also located there.  It was difficult to extinguish the fire. The police started to inquire about the possibility that the fires were acts of sabotage when a new forest fire was set on 10 September 2015, after 15 days of the first fire on the same military location. After some time a group of PKK members who set this fire organized attacks to general stores and to the offices of Justice and Development Party.On the basis of the information acquired from these PKK members a ‘carrier,’ who carry the PKK’s reports from İstanbul and other regions to Diyarbakır was spotted. The carrier was monitored and on 7 October 2015 was taken under custody when he was just getting on a flight to Diyarbakır at İstanbul Sabiha Gökçen Airport. The person who was taken under custody was H.D., who was a senior in Bosphorus University—a University, where students are admitted by the higher ranks that they reach in the central examination for university educations.

H.D., who was a member of the Youth Assembly of the Peoples’ Democratic Congress—an organization of which co-presidencies are carried out by Sabahat Tuncel and Ertuğrul Kürkçü—have not committed any illegal deed until that day. According to the police forces that is the reason behind  his selection as the carrier. The information that that he carried a flash memory, containing the reports released to the press. The reports were meant to be handed to someone whose address and identity was specified and who was in Diyarbakır and known as the Representative in Turkey. According to the resources of the police one of the reports in the same flash memory was sent from the PKK’s Çukurova region and a woman militant was stating that “she is ready even for a live bomb attack if needed.”

Until know I listed the claims of the police forces released to the [mass] media, and those that I could reach.

Now let’s turn to what H.D.’s attorney said: “The police forces invaded H.D’s home and they retained his unbanned books. These books have the record label of the Ministry of Culture on them. Besides, a couple of journals were also confiscated. Apart from that they also found a couple of songs on his phone and downloaded them. Afterwards they said ‘If you listen to these songs and read these books, then you are a member of the organization’ [meaning the PKK—translator’s note]. They showed the videos that he watched and songs that he listened to, saying that ‘There are members of the organization in these videos’, thus blaming H.D. on this reason.”

This is the defense that runs as “there is nothing at all”, resembling the defense by the attorneys, examples of which were also listed in my previous piece. It turns out that the police forces took under custody a university student, not in his home or school but at the airport just on the basis of the songs that he listened to on Youtube, just for oppression. Yet, we still have just reasons to be skeptical. In Turkey there is this tradition of unjust custodies, quick attribution to membership to the organization. There were a lot of examples of this in the past; today it is still continuing.

The news was broadcast in certain part of the mass media on the basis of the claims by the police forces; and in another part of the mass media on the basis of the attorney’s declarations.

Again, the news concerned was cleared of any doubt.

For example: “The Bosphorus University student, who was a HDK member was arrested because of the books he read and the songs he listened to!” http://www.diken.com.tr/hdk-uyesi-bogazicili-okudugu-kitaplar-ve-dinledigi-sarkilar-yuzunden-tutuklandi/But I assume that when we are struggling against terror which locks people into their houses no one has the luxury to manipulate the truth in accordance with political interests, not at all.

Especially in a country where suicide bombers explode themselves all over [the country]; when the PKK started armed ‘resistance’ in Sur, Cizre; at a time when the world is struggling against terror and Turkey is neighboring those centers of terror, and moreover when the state is being criticized rightly for failing to preempt the terrorist acts on time, for failing in intelligence regarding suicide bombers, a university, and especially the scholars of the university, which is the best university in Turkey are expected to be more cautious, more skeptic.

This is all the more so when the students whose responsibilities that they takeover on themselves are concerned.

But no, it could not happen this time either. Partisanship, revolutionary solidarity, unconditional support overwhelmed; and the academics did what the journalists in my previous piece did. Around 200 academics, working in Bosphorus University, including those most prominent in their respective fields, who are hard-bitten signed a declaration, titled “we claim our student.” http://www.milliyet.com.tr/bogazici-universitesi-ogrencisine-gundem-2133242/

This did not suffice. Beth Baron, the chair of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), based in the US, one of the most known institutions in the field of research on the Middle East wrote a letter to the Prime Minister Davutoğlu for H.D., clearly by the reference of the scholars from Bosphorus University.

http://mesana.org/committees/academic-freedom/intervention/letters-turkey.html#Turkey20151030

(I can presume who was effective in the writing of the letter. However I do not have solid information about it. Thus, let me just put this link here:     http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/about)

While the scholars were writing the declaration concerned, H.D.’s attorney, Hüseyin Boğatekin, who is a member of the Association of the Libertarian Jurists [Özgürlükçü Hukukçular Derneği] was defending the rights of other students in Balıkesir in another lawsuit. (There is a legal support network formed by Boğatekin and his association, which gives support to the students who are brought to court in PKK-related cases.)

One of those students turned out to be a suicide bomber 6 months later in Ankara.

Briefly, another client of the attorney who is the source of all the information about H.D.’s innocence, whose name is mentioned even in the letter by the MESA chair to the Prime Minister Davutoğlu, and whom the attorney defended on the grounds of similar arguments exploded herself/himself five months later in the center of Ankara. It is certain that an attorney can defend anybody. S/he cannot be blamed for defending her/his client. But it is essential to keep doubt alive when you’re vouching for some one. This is all the more so when the student you had defended against slander turns out to be the suicide bomber responsible for the death of 37 innocent people.But even this case does not seem to have led to doubt or some confusion among the Simons living in Bosphorus. This is still so even when the police forces claimed that one of the reports carried by one of the students contained the statement of will by a woman for suicide bombing. And we are talking about a university where two vehicles, parked in the parking lots in and out of the campus were seized with the suspicion that they would be used in a suicide bombing attack, about 20 days ago.

Let’s read the news about the seizing of the first vehicle from Hürriyet:

“The police forces were following Sinem Oğuz, with the alias Funda Kaya. According to the police forces’ findings mechanisms were set in the Citroen brand automobile; the explosives that would be carried over from Diyarbakır were yet to come. The automobile was taken to the parking lot in the university by an employee in the Bosphorus University, who is an acquittance of Sinem Oğuz.The university employee, R.Ü., who helped Oğuz vanished away. Sinem Oğuz went to Diyarbakır. Oğuz and H.A., beside her, who were stated to be PKK members were arrested in Diyarbakır on January 27.”

When you search for R.Ü., the university employee who ‘hosted’ the vehicle, carrying the mechanism for locating the bomb, on the campus of the Bosphorus University, you come across with an administrator who is probably in control of the whole information network of the university. According to the police records the bomber Sinem Oğuz and the person accompanying her went to Diyarbakır to pick up the bombs that would be located inside the vehicle. Then, if they could have returned [to İstanbul] if they had not been arrested where was the target of the vehicle, waiting on the campus of Bosphorus University? Again according to the police records the target was the mobile striking force spot, just behind the Taksim Square. This means Taksim Square! This means all of us!

If a state had this much information, and the state would say “no way, s/he would not do such things,” and if that man or another person with his assistance had committed an act that state would have been severely accused and this would have been a just accusation. And what about putting one’s signature on such responsibility in the face of a case, which makes one horrified even in its one in a billion probability of being true?

We are all right to criticize the state, the intelligence, to ask for more precautions regarding suicide bombers, regarding terrorism.

Then what about those, who open breathing and acting space for terrorism, for suicide bombers due to their political battles, ideological animosities, revolutionary solidarities, who support them, who open the path to them in their newspapers, in the courts, in the universities; who unconditionally believe in their propaganda; who are used as instruments…

If we want to protect our liberties and our security none of us has the right to become Simon, especially now, when a list, citing Suruç, Ankara, Sultanahmet, Ankara, İstiklal stands before us…

[1] Here the term “Simons” is most probably used in the way it was used in Hanefi Avcı’s book, titled Haliç’te Yaşayan Simonlar (Simons Living in Haliç), basically denoting those people who totally abide with the priorities and aims of the groups/organizations to which they belong to and who react against only to those violations of rights that are directly related to their groups/organizations. Besides, the name “Simon” has widely been used in the discourse of conservative circles throughout republican history in Turkey in a rather pejorative manner. It is a kind of a “catchword,” that reflects the common conservative discriminatory stance against any ethnicity/religious identity that is not related to Sunni-Muslim Turkishness. Briefly, while the term is originally Hebrew, it is also used to connote Armenian identity. www.mesop.de