Français | English

You won’t find any arti­cles in the Kedis­tan archives on the Kobanê demon­stra­tions, so called by the Kur­dish move­ment, but not only. The online mag­a­zine only came into exis­tence a few weeks fol­low­ing the events.

But those days are known from every­one, when in Syr­ia, the coali­tion of West­ern pow­ers  cooked up the good old recipe used in Afghanistan, which is to say that of using a sec­ondary ene­my against the one con­sid­ered as the main one,  the “beard­ed ones” against the “reds”. This time, the des­ig­nat­ed ene­my was Bachar, yes­ter­day’s for­mer ally, held in con­tempt fol­low­ing a cer­tain Arab Spring. With the Unit­ed States lead­ing the way – bare­ly out of the total desta­bi­liza­tion of the region with the war in Irak,  (also rest­ing on a pseu­do Ira­ki pow­er play­ing on reli­gious divi­sions),  they threw them­selves into assis­tance to anti-Assad groups that were already gan­grened by Jihadist fac­tions that were con­fis­cat­ing the social and polit­i­cal upris­ing of 2011.

ISIS pro­claimed its Cal­i­fate in June 2014, when this polit­i­cal strat­e­gy was in full swing, and while Turkey, a NATO mem­ber, was gar­ner­ing side ben­e­fits,   and antic­i­pat­ing returns on forth­com­ing invest­ments in the Syr­i­an zones under occu­pa­tion. Under these con­di­tions, the ISIS attack against Kobanê, received more than a wait-and-see approach, rest­ing as it did on the strat­e­gy of the West­ern pow­ers. For the first time, Kobanê revealed   the fail­ure of a polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary strat­e­gy direct­ed from the out­side, one for which the Kur­dish pop­u­la­tions were already pay­ing a heavy price. The town, this time mar­tyred in 2015, would become the sym­bol  of a pos­si­ble resis­tance, for all the world to see, and would put an end to this strat­e­gy of unnat­ur­al alliances, except for Turkey who con­tin­ued with prac­tices it already applied domestically.

The fact that the Kur­dish move­ment in Turkey raised the alarm on what was play­ing out then, and not only in terms of human­i­tar­i­an aid,  touched the entire­ty of the oppo­si­tion to the regime, its Kemal­ist seg­ment as well as its more dynam­ic and demo­c­ra­t­ic por­tion. In fact, it was an alarm con­cern­ing the instru­men­tal­iza­tion of Jihadist forces against pos­si­ble demo­c­ra­t­ic advances in Turkey itself, and the will to con­sol­i­date pow­er based on a war strat­e­gy. This is how and why the HDP and the social oppo­si­tion move­ment cen­tered their pol­i­cy on Peace.

Thus,  it is most use­ful to under­stand how, with this tri­al against the HDP, using Kobanê as a pre­text, the Turk­ish regime based on the AKP/MHP tan­dem, wish­es to erase the evi­dence of its total com­plic­it­ness with Jihadism, by revers­ing the accu­sa­tion on vio­lence and war, in order to incrim­i­nate the oppo­si­tion’s poli­cies and con­tribute to the liq­ui­da­tion of the HDP.

In pass­ing, one can also under­line what mean­ing the word “jus­tice” still con­veys in Turkey: that of a the­ater main­tained  as a façade, so as not to break the struc­ture of treaties of coop­er­a­tion, but one where every­thing unfolds accord­ing to the orders of those in power.

kobane

An impor­tant inter­view con­duct­ed by Sel­man Güze­lyüz with Kazım Bayrak­tar, one of the defense lawyers in the tri­al, for the Mesopotamia Agency and pub­lished in Turk­ish on April 28 2021.

Me. Kazım Bayraktar : “The autopsy reports would point to the author”

The first hear­ing of the “Kobanê Tri­al” on April 26 2021, intro­duced a new dimen­sion in the relent­less attacks against Kur­dish poli­cies in Turkey. The tri­al dur­ing which 108 polit­i­cal women and men, 28 of which are already detained, is based on actions tak­en in Kobanê, in response to attacks by ISIS. The reac­tive nature of these actions is a known fact for pub­lic opin­ion across the world.

Based on doc­u­ments and infor­ma­tion fig­ur­ing in the file of the attacks com­mit­ted by ISIS, Kazım Bayrak­tar, one of the lawyers at the tri­al, states that those in pow­er are attempt­ing to hide the truth. Kazım Bayrak­tar, who is also the lawyer for the vic­tims of these attacks, states that the Kobanê Tri­al is not lim­it­ed to Kur­dish poli­cies, but is also of con­cern for all of the opposition.

We spoke to Kazım Bayrak­tar about the Kobanê Tri­al. He has been in prac­tice since the cor­ri­dors of the State Secu­ri­ty Tri­bunals fol­low­ing the mil­i­tary coup d’E­tat on Sep­tem­ber 12 1980, and now in the penal tri­bunals of the AKP era.

• Dur­ing the audi­ence where the lawyers left the hear­ing room, due process was not applied, the accused were not giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak, and the act of accu­sa­tion was read in the absence of the defense. Why was this tri­al delayed for a week, when it was sup­posed to run for a month?

We came pre­pared to the hear­ing. The tri­bunal sensed our prepa­ra­tion, they also came pre­pared. In speak­ing of prepa­ra­tion, I mean “who will have the upper hand psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly in this affair.” 

The hear­ing began with the record­ing of state­ments con­cern­ing the per­sons involved in the mat­ter. We request­ed that our clients Sela­hat­tin Demir­taş and Figen Yük­sek­dağ be allowed to speak pri­or to the read­ing of the act of accu­sa­tion, but the court broke with judi­cia­ry pro­ce­dure and moved direct­ly to the read­ing of the act of accusation.

We filed a state­ment regard­ing the fact that our friends in the legal pro­fes­sion were kept from enter­ing the hear­ing room, and that this was a break in pro­ce­dure. The sit­u­a­tion of our col­leagues who could not enter the room was final­ly entered in the pro­ceed­ings. But then, the audio record­ings of our col­leagues and clients were not entered into the records of the SEGBIS the offi­cial “video and audio infor­ma­tion sys­tem”. See­ing this, we left the tri­al as a sign of protest.

After a while, the tri­bunal real­ized what they were doing. When they guessed where this was going, they backed down. “Your lawyers may return”, they said. When we came back to enter the room, the police tried to block the way by clos­ing the door. When the lawyers had to force their way in, the Pres­i­dent of the tri­bunal had to say “let them enter”.

Then, Sela­hat­tin Demir­taş and Figen Yük­sek­dağ wished to file an argu­ment­ed recu­sa­tion of the judge at the hear­ing.1

But the tri­bunal, which nor­mal­ly must record such a request, did not allow them to express it. The lawyers attempt­ed to trans­mit this  recu­sa­tion request, but they were not autho­rized to do so either. The tri­bunal pur­sued the hear­ing by read­ing the act of accu­sa­tion. As a protest against these prac­tices dis­re­spec­tif of pro­ce­dures, we again left the room.

Dur­ing this entire sequence, the tri­bunal exer­cised obstruc­tion, cut­ting the sound on the SEGBIS record­ings of our clients, when it so decid­ed. The tri­al went on in this man­ner until night time.

Final­ly, the tri­bunal decid­ed to reject the request of recu­sa­tion from the lawyers, with­out their being able to state it. It then claimed it wished to receive this request from our clients, but they declared that, being kept in igno­rance of what was going on at the hear­ing, they wished to trans­mit the refusal in writ­ing. The tri­bunal had to adjourn the hear­ing, being forced to obtain the motives for the recu­sa­tion request.

• Let’s get back to the “psy­cho­log­i­cal upper hand”…

The tri­bunal failed to obtain the psy­cho­log­i­cal ascen­den­cy it wished to estab­lish. The num­ber of par­tic­i­pat­ing lawyers was very high. Seri­ous reac­tions were demon­strat­ed in the hall with protests and applause. Faced with this, the tri­bunal had to adjourn the hear­ing, because it want­ed to devel­op a counter-offen­sive. What the tri­bunal wished to do was to keep Sela­hat­tin Demir­taş and Figen Yük­sek­dağ from lay­ing out the judi­cial and polit­i­cal back­ground to this case. Because on this first day of the hear­ing,   words from the two Co-Pres­i­dents would exert an influ­ence on the pub­lic. They wished to avoid that. They did so by shut­ting down the SEGBIS record­ings. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of putting an end to the mat­ter with­in the planned time peri­od thus found itself extreme­ly weakened.

• What do you expect from the sec­ond hear­ing of this Kobanê trial?

Next Mon­day will be the final day for the request for the recu­sa­tion of a judge. If there is a hear­ing, when this request is pre­sent­ed, the judge must send it to a high­er juris­dic­tion. The del­e­ga­tion of judges will then adjourn the hear­ing again.

• Con­cern­ing the nature of the case, how do think oth­er hear­ings will play out?

This tri­al is an ille­git­i­mate one. From its con­tent to the way it was pre­pared, total ille­gal­i­ty pre­vailed. On the basis of arti­cle 90 of the Turk­ish Con­sti­tu­tion and the deci­sion of the Euro­pean Human Rights Court (CEDH), which is a bind­ing one for Turkey, main­tain­ing the par­ties con­cerned in prison is no longer a deten­tion but an impris­on­ment. Against those remain­ing in deten­tion, a crime of “ille­gal deten­tion” is being com­mit­ted, which could serve as a motive to open a tri­al. Thus we are in the pres­ence of judges and pros­e­cu­tors being led into crim­i­nal conduct.

Dur­ing the peri­od of alliance between the AKP and Fethul­lah Gülen, there were judges and pros­e­cu­tors who com­mit­ted ille­gal acts, such as the Ergenekon Tri­al. The judges, the pros­e­cu­tors, the police offi­cers and agents who worked in this man­ner at the time are now in prison for the crimes to which they were led. The cur­rent ones are also being led into ille­gal­i­ty. We will attempt to express this. We will tell them: “you are doing some­thing that will lead to your judg­ment.” More­over, we will adopt an active­ly defen­sive judi­cial posi­tion, even one of counter-attack. We will not be the ones being judged, but those pro­nounc­ing the accu­sa­tion. We will accuse those who played a role in the unfold­ing of events, from top to bot­tom. They say “Kobanê”, we will say “ISIS”.

• The del­e­ga­tion of judges obtained a spe­cial sta­tus with the nom­i­na­tion of a sec­ond del­e­ga­tion to the 22nd Tri­bunal for heavy penal cas­es in  Ankara, giv­en the pos­si­bil­i­ty of han­dling only the Kobanê case. How should we under­stand this practice? 

This vio­lates the “prin­ci­ple of nat­ur­al judg­ment” in Law with judges and pros­e­cu­tors being named on the basis of the case.  There is also the fact that cer­tain pros­e­cu­tors are removed from an ongo­ing case and replaced by oth­ers. As per­tains to this case, we under­stood when the pros­e­cu­tor was replaced that the pros­e­cu­tor that was named was clear­ly iden­ti­fied as MHP, Nation­al­ist Action Par­ty. Such nom­i­na­tions are incom­pat­i­ble with the prin­ci­ple of “nat­ur­al judg­ment” in order to deter­mine the fate of the accused in a tri­al. And that is only a small part of the matter…

There is also the big­ger part, the one that has been con­sol­i­dat­ed over the past years. In any event, judi­cia­ry pow­er in Turkey, from the Supreme Court to the local tri­bunal is total­ly removed from the prin­ci­ple of nat­ur­al judgment.

In oth­er words, jus­tice is devised in such a way that any­one, down to the last court clerk, may be removed dur­ing the night and replaced on the fol­low­ing day. The laws were rewrit­ten to allow this. This hap­pened with the con­sti­tu­tion­al mod­i­fi­ca­tion in 2010, renewed to this day. It was not dif­fi­cult to pro­ceed to such a nom­i­na­tion since the judi­cial pow­er was already entire­ly depen­dent on those in power.

The del­e­ga­tion of judges cur­rent­ly han­dling this case has oth­er busi­ness to attend to. There are sev­er­al tri­als in this Court. This com­mit­tee will pur­sue pre­de­ter­mined work in order to con­tin­ue exam­in­ing this case. Fresh staff was nom­i­nat­ed as rein­force­ment. Those judges will han­dle the oth­er mat­ters before this Court. The cur­rent del­e­ga­tion will pur­sue this tri­al in the frame­work in which it is impris­oned and its sole respon­si­bil­i­ty will be the han­dling of this case. This is one of those sit­u­a­tions that vio­lates the prin­ci­ple of nat­ur­al judge­ment. By Law, a judge can­not attend sole­ly to one case.

• Do you men­tion this new practice?

A new prac­tice, only in that it appears in the light of day. Which is to say, a del­e­ga­tion of judges giv­en a sole task. Sim­i­lar prac­tices occurred dur­ing the peri­od of the State Secu­ri­ty Court (DGM)2 as fol­lows: some cas­es were trans­mit­ted to the State Secu­ri­ty Court. There was no ques­tion of treat­ing only some cas­es, but since oth­er files were not com­mu­ni­cat­ed to it, its tasks were light­ened and its work could be con­cen­trat­ed on a spe­cif­ic trial.

These kinds of tac­tics were used at the time. But now, when an impor­tant polit­i­cal oper­a­tion is planned, the mag­is­trates in exer­cise at the time when it will be held, are cho­sen before­hand and specif­i­cal­ly for it. There is a phe­nom­e­non of nom­i­na­tion of cer­tain judges and pros­e­cu­tors, meant to fill cer­tain objec­tives. This has become a com­mon prac­tice, but the nom­i­na­tion of a del­e­ga­tion of judges to a sole tri­al, as in this tri­al, is still a rare occurrence.

• Many things have been said and writ­ten con­cern­ing the state­ment of accu­sa­tion and var­i­ous names impli­cat­ed in the mat­ter at hand. Look­ing at all these devel­op­ments, what name whould we ascribe to this case?

We could also call it the con­spir­a­tionist tri­al, but the whole issue  does not  have the car­ac­ter­is­tics of a “tri­al” in the true mean­ing of the word. It is sim­ply a bad tri­al, used as an intru­ment. This mat­ter appears as the prod­uct of a strat­e­gy of liq­ui­da­tion of Kur­dish pol­i­tics, one that is increas­ing. In oth­er words, this tri­al aims at push­ing back, or even pro­gres­sive­ly elim­i­nat­ing posi­tions the Kur­dish polit­i­cal move­ment had man­aged to achieve thus far.  It is also con­duct­ed in order to par­a­lyze and destroy the Peo­ples’ Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (HDP) in all areas. Which is to say, on the one side, the tri­al for the dis­so­lu­tion of the HDP is ongo­ing, but on the oth­er, as this tri­al will lead to a sep­a­rate polit­i­cal result, and that there is still no com­mon think­ing in this mat­ter on the part of the part­ners shar­ing pow­er, the Kobanê Tri­al is the most cen­tral pro­ce­dure used in order to com­plete­ly dis­rupt the HDP.

• Does the tri­al then aim the liq­ui­da­tion of the Kur­dish polit­i­cal movement?

This tri­al does not only take aim on the Kurds. It also sig­ni­fies the will to for­bid polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion. It is a tri­al that con­tains a mes­sage accord­ing to which the pol­i­cy of the Kur­dish move­ment, and the oth­er left­ist notions asso­ci­at­ed with the Kur­dish move­ment in one way or anoth­er, will no longer be autho­rized to live in this sys­tem. Of course, when we exam­ine the con­tent of the case, there are a lot of acro­bat­ics involved,  from false evi­dence to fal­si­fi­ca­tions in order to achieve this end…

And when exam­ined under this angle, it is tru­ly a mat­ter of plot­ting. Because the HDP does not present itself as a plain Kur­dish move­ment. Dur­ing the elec­tions of June 7 2015, and in the fol­low­ing peri­od, it began to obtain the votes in the West­ern regions of Turkey and among oth­er left­ist ten­den­cies. Every­one, and espe­cial­ly the gov­ern­ment, saw that the HDP was tak­ing on greater impor­tance and becom­ing a demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty for all of Turkey.  It also began cre­at­ing a dynam­ic aimed at insur­ing a large unit­ed front against fas­cism. In order to elim­i­nate this dan­ger, the gov­ern­ment crim­i­nal­izes the HDP and wish­es to destroy it, divid­ing and purg­ing all of its allies and sup­port­ers in what­ev­er zones and spaces they may occupy.

I will speak based on pre­vi­ous years. In the politi­co-eco­nom­ic sense, it is a ques­tion of cen­tral­iza­tion, aimed at man­ag­ing all the State insti­tu­tions, the judi­cia­ry, the exec­u­tive and the leg­isla­tive from a sin­gle cen­ter. The Kur­dish polit­i­cal move­ment, the HDP and oth­er rev­o­lu­tion­ary left­ist par­ties, the work­ing class, the pop­u­lar class­es and women are obsta­cles to this cen­tral­iza­tion process. Thus there is a surge toward liq­ui­da­tion of all for­ma­tions and orga­ni­za­tions, despite they’re being legal. This is a form of fas­cist dic­ta­tor­ship. In oth­er words, as we move toward 2023, fas­cism will go on fur­ther con­sol­i­dat­ing what it is cur­rent­ly doing, cen­tral­iz­ing, elim­i­nat­ing all seg­ments of the oppo­si­tion to a dic­ta­tor­ship. This tri­al is in fact one of the steps in this direction.

• What  is the prob­lem for those direct­ing the cen­tral­iza­tion of which you speak, when deal­ing with Kobanê?

One of the main prob­lems is that, when the pop­u­lar move­ment began in Syr­ia, Occi­cen­tal imper­al­ists devel­oped cer­tain plans and attempt­ed to main­tain a posi­tion in Syr­ia by arm­ing salafist gangs, a pol­i­cy they had pre­vi­ous­ly used in the Mid­dle-East and in Asia. As for the part­ners of those in pow­er, they also act­ed joint­ly with the West in using gangs, esti­mat­ing their poten­tial share in the spoils. But the cal­cu­la­tions did not match up with the mar­ket price. Lat­er, the West­ern strat­e­gy sug­gest­ed some arrange­ments, but the AKP held on to the salafist gangs, in par­tic­u­lar, the Islam­ic State, Al-Qaï­da and oth­er sim­i­lar gangs in order to use them in liq­ui­dat­ing le Kur­dish move­ment in Syr­ia. At the same time as the El was mov­ing and mul­ti­ply­ing its attacks against Kobanê, the AKP reached  such a close coop­er­a­tion with the gangs called El and ASL that only the Kur­dish move­ment stood up to it in this process. Luck­i­ly, they were beat­en by the Kur­dish move­ment. Of course, there was a price to pay for this defeat. They then used a num­ber of tac­tics to charge the cost to the Kur­dish move­ment. One of which were the demon­stra­tions in Kobanê: the gov­ern­ment used both legit­i­mate and ille­git­i­mate means dur­ing the protests, caus­ing the death of many peo­ple. Those in pow­er are direct­ly respon­si­ble for these deaths.

But in order to reverse this per­cep­tion and the loss­es asso­ci­at­ed with it, those in pow­er con­sid­ered it appro­pri­ate to accuse the Kur­dish move­ment, the Kur­dish politi­cians and the HDP in a mat­ter where it was the guilty par­ty itself. In a way, it used this busi­ness as an instru­ment to make the HDP pay for its own liq­ui­da­tion and for the mas­sacres of Kobanê. The Kobanê Affair is used as a tool to purge the oppo­si­tion. But we will lift the veil, we will clear­ly reveal the alliance between the AKP, the Islam­ic State and the salafist gangs, as well as the aim of cov­er­ing the mas­sacres it com­mit­ted in Turkey.

• You are also the lawyer in the mat­ter of the many attacks per­pe­trat­ed by ISIS in Turkey. Tell us your con­clu­sion in light of these cases?

The demon­stra­tions of Octo­ber 6th and 8th in Kobanê are used as an excuse. There is a before and there is an after. Exam­in­ing the elec­tions of June 7th and Novem­ber 1st 2015, we see that the AKP and its part­ners opened the way for the Islam­ic State and sim­i­lar salafist gangs to struc­ture Turkey. Dur­ing the tri­als of the attack on the Ankara sta­tion on Octo­ber 10 2015, the Suruç attack on July 21 2015 and the attack in Diyarbakır on June 5 2015 (dur­ing an HDP elec­toral meet­ing) we came across such doc­u­ments and files which showed us that the process around the demon­stra­tions in Kobanê was one in which the alliance of the cen­ter of pow­er in Turkey with the Islam­ic State was real­ized in the field.

• Can you give us a telling exam­ple you encounter in the files?

On August 9 2012, lead­ers of the secu­ri­ty and intel­li­gence agen­cies in Antep signed a doc­u­ment to trace some names linked to al-Qaï­da. The doc­u­ment clear­ly stip­u­lates the names of the per­sons under sur­veil­lance. These per­sons will then com­mit attacks. Sur­veil­lance of these peo­ple had thus been decid­ed, a state­ment was pub­lished. In con­for­mi­ty with the pro­to­cole, a inquest file N° 44540 for the year 2012 was in prepa­ra­tion. The sur­veil­lance runs until 2014 for these indi­vid­u­als who will then appear in an inquest file as mem­bers of ISIS com­ing from Al-Qaï­da. In 2014–2015, gov­ern­men­tal poli­cies do not keep per­sons under sur­veil­lance from cre­at­ing asso­ci­a­tions and foun­da­tions, open­ing bank accounts… We also note that such asso­cia­tive work is done by those who will then per­pe­trate the attacks. The Tri­bunal has over 80 sur­veil­lance decisions.

When we reach 2014–2015, in exam­in­ing the file, we real­ized that a num­ber of per­sons, begin­ning with Ilham Bal­lı were under sur­veil­lance par the office of Ankara’s gen­er­al pros­e­cu­tor. In prin­ci­ple, all their con­ver­sa­tions were record­ed. Nor­mal­ly, there should be an ordi­nance by the tri­bunal for the record­ing of their con­ver­sa­tions. But, on Feb­ru­ary 2015, the office of Ankara’s gen­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, for an unknown rea­son, annuls the deci­sion to record Ilham Bal­lı’s con­ver­sa­tions and opts for the destruc­tion of those record­ings already car­ried out. Lat­er, it turned out that Ilham Bal­lı had con­ver­sa­tions con­cern­ing the orga­ni­za­tion of the road we call the “Jihadist high­way” allow­ing those who per­pe­trat­ed the attacks to come and go in Turkey. He did this, with con­stant phone calls to cer­tain mem­bers of ISIS present in Turkey and the set­ting up of meet­ing places.

Lat­er, media report­ed that Ilham Bal­lı was in con­tact with Turk­ish intel­li­gence (MIT).  Cer­tain events that devel­oped in the back­ground also con­firm this.

In look­ing at all this, as we were work­ing toward the elec­tions at the end of 2014 and in 2015, demon­stra­tions occurred in Kobanê and when we exam­ine the files of that peri­od, we see that the ISIS gangs are under sur­veil­lance but with a dif­fer­ent pol­i­cy. What is this pol­i­cy. “Keep them under sur­veil­lance, record them but don’t touch them.” They are not touched. From time to time, they con­duct osten­ta­tious and exag­ger­at­ed oper­a­tions, but there are no oper­a­tions aimed at neu­tral­iz­ing these per­sons. As of the begin­ning of 2015, these peo­ple devel­op cel­lu­lar struc­tures in Antep and pre­pare mate­ri­als and explo­sives. With the approach of the June 7 elec­tions, dur­ing the peri­od of con­flict between the oppo­si­tion and those in pow­er around Kobanê, coop­er­a­tion of the gov­ern­ment (with these per­son) keeps on improving.

We see in the files of the pre-elec­tion peri­od, how the pol­i­cy using ISIS as a means to cre­ate chaos and fear in Turkey was con­duct­ed, step by step. It began with the attack on June 5. Demir­taş is on the podi­um, the HDP is hold­ing its meet­ing and the killer sent by Ilham Bal­lı com­mits the attack in Diyarbakır. This is not a coin­ci­dence. We now under­stand, based on the doc­u­ments on file, that this killer named Orhan Gön­der per­pe­trat­ed the attack under State surveillance.

The killers who pre­pared the attack in Ankara on Octo­ber 10 were also tracked dur­ing their pur­chase of nitrate of ammo­ni­um. The office of the gov­er­nor of Ankara ordered the sup­pres­sion of all bor­der con­trols dur­ing the night when the “human bombs” arrived in Ankara. Kobanê is well and tru­ly the process through which the rela­tion­ship between the Islam­ic State and the cen­ters of pow­er in Turkey devel­oped very clear­ly. These files should not be exam­ined inde­pen­dent­ly. The main objec­tive in using the term “Kobanê” for the inquests and arrests aimed at elim­i­nat­ing the oppo­si­tion is to cov­er and reverse these crimes.

• Polit­i­cal lead­ers of the HDP are held guilty of the death of 37 per­sons but the file did not even include reports from the med­ical bureau con­cern­ing the dead. The lawyers said they had no con­nec­tion to the accu­sa­tions. Is there suf­fi­cient evi­dence in the Kobanê file to direct the accu­sa­tion of “inten­tion­al attempt­ed mur­der” which car­ries heavy sen­tenc­ing, toward a per­son or an institution?

In the case of a tri­al for acts such as mur­ders, wounds or destruc­tion of goods – which can be of a judi­cia­ry nature – the exis­tence of a causal rela­tion­ship between the author and the evi­dence must be estab­lished. Evi­dence of guilt, evi­dence of acts com­mit­ted must be revealed. Vague and vary­ing dec­la­ra­tions by wit­ness­es – and let’s not even men­tion “secret wit­ness­es” 3 are not suf­fi­cient. In the case of a mur­der, in the pre­sentce of two, three state­ments by wit­ness­es, one can­not even say “this per­son com­mit­ted this mur­der” or yet again “this mur­der was com­mit­ted in such and such a way.” This is not how the judi­cial process works. Who killed so many peo­ple? The State does not con­duct an inquiry on this ques­tion. It does noth­ing oth­er than col­lect mate­r­i­al proof of deaths and only those that it finds con­ve­nient. And even this, it does only halfway. There is no autop­sy report. Per­haps in these autop­sy reports the vehi­cles that caused the deaths might point toward the State. Who knows, per­haps a bul­let removed from a vic­tim’s body came from a police­man’s weapon… None of this was exam­ined.  The autop­sy reports would point to the author. They attempt to avoid this detec­tion. While avoid­ing the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the author, they state: “The lead­ers of the HDP called for the demon­stra­tion, they are the ones who incit­ed the violence.” 

In such cas­es, there is a “crime of incite­ment” but the insti­ga­tor must lead to action on the part of the author. There has to exist a rela­tion­ship between the insti­ga­tor and the author. You must expose this rela­tion­ship. Demir­taş, the direc­tor of HDP or the exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee took a deci­sion and called for a protest against the attacks by ISIS. You say: “They are the insti­ga­tors.” This is a polit­i­cal accu­sa­tion but, in Law, you can­not do this. When you attempt to estab­lish the causal link in real­i­ty, you base this on evi­dence. You go all the way to the Min­istry of the Inte­ri­or because they are the ones charged with insti­tut­ing the secu­ri­ty exer­cised by the Min­istry of the Inte­ri­or and the secu­ri­ty and intel­li­gence agencies.

What were their posi­tions dur­ing these events? Who did what and where. This must be exam­ined. And it is pre­cise­ly in order not to inves­ti­gate this that they are pre­pared to sub­mit a crude accu­sa­tion, con­tain­ing vague and deformed charges. This has noth­ing to do with a judi­cia­ry process. These are fan­tasies. If you look close­ly, 27 of the dead were mem­bers of the HDP. HDP mem­bers killed one another?

• It was announced that in the future, the Kobanê tri­al will be con­duct­ed with secret wit­ness­es. The act of accu­sa­tion includes sev­er­al dec­la­ra­tions by secret or iden­ti­fied wit­ness­es, yet con­tra­dic­tions have appeared in the con­tent of the dec­la­ra­tions accord­ing to how they were recorded…

If we wish to speak about an equi­table and demo­c­ra­t­ic tri­al, there can be no ques­tion of a con­cept such as a “secret wit­ness”. If you believe his or her tes­ti­mo­ny may place the  per­son in dan­ger, you put the per­son under pro­tec­tion. Above all, the wit­ness must be inter­ro­gat­ed by both par­ties. Sec­ond­ly, when the wit­ness­es make their state­ments, they must describe the event, the time and the loca­tion, and not deliv­er vague com­ments repeat­ing hearsay from this one or that one, what they heard, what they read…If you look at the wit­ness state­ments in this file, you find noth­ing of the kind. The wit­ness­es are not at the loca­tion where the events take place.They sim­ply make accu­sa­tions, such as “Demir­taş went there, he received instruc­tions, he came back.” So we ask “were you with him? Where did he do this? Who else was there at the time? Do you have a date, or a time?” None of that exists.

• Orig­i­nal­ly, to what to you link this meth­ods and these prac­tices of  the “secret witness” ?

This is noth­ing new in Turk­ish his­to­ry. This prac­tice already exist­ed in the State Secu­ri­ty Tri­bunals dur­ing the peri­od of the mil­i­tary coup d’é­tat of Sep­tem­ber 12 1980. The term in those days was not “secret wit­ness” but “con­fes­sion wit­ness” or “repent­ing wit­ness”. Today, it has been legit­imized. The prac­tice has become so com­mon that it is con­stant­ly used against those who oppose those in pow­er, includ­ing in the Ergenekon affair. In the series of alliances with the AKP, it is also used in the tri­als involv­ing the Gülen Broth­er­hood. They also used these meth­ods against one anoth­er, like a lan­guage we con­sid­er dirty and ille­git­i­mate. A secret wit­ness is not a proof, he is used in tri­als filled with con­spir­a­cys and all kinds of fab­ri­ca­tions. In fact, it means: “I can’t find any mate­r­i­al proof, but I want to con­demn you.” Divulging an absence of con­crete evi­dence is the con­fir­ma­tion of the absence of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of accu­sa­tions. It indi­cates that the accu­sa­tions can­not be made against the HDP or the per­sons iden­ti­fied as the accused.

• The file con­tains many parts, from the MIT to the Prime Min­is­ter’s Cab­i­net, from the Min­istry of Jus­tice to that of the Min­istry of the Inte­ri­or. Dur­ing the protests, the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or at the the time, were in con­tact with the HDP. Demir­taş explained this before the 19th Penal Court where he is under tri­al. The HDP Deputy Sır­rı Süreyya Önder also stat­ed this in a declra­tion to the pros­e­cu­tor’s office. If there is a tri­al in this inves­ti­ga­tion, why are the mem­bers of the HDP des­ig­nat­ed as “sus­pects” If there is a crime, is there not also a respon­si­b­li­ty of those who were in con­tact with the “crim­i­nals”? 

Undoubt­ed­ly. That said, the AKP’s efforts so that the inquest and tri­als against the HDP be at its own ini­tia­tive have a rea­son. As for the con­tact of the HDP with Qandil and the PKK dur­ing the res­o­lu­tion process 4 of which Demir­taş is pre­cise­ly accused in that file, it appears that the AKP pro­ceeds in its own way, and the MHP oth­er­wise… Con­cern­ing these tri­als, of course, they expe­ri­ence ten­sions between them­selves. And we see this very clear­ly in the fact, the one secret­ly accused in this tri­als is tru­ly Erdoğan. If dec­la­ra­tions, meet­ings con­duct­ed dur­ing the res­o­lu­tion process are brought up in the act of accu­sa­tion as crimes, well, they are estab­lished in the doc­u­ments. Every­thing took place with the approval of the insti­tu­tions and the author­i­ties cho­sen by the gov­ern­ment. They were aware of it all. These talks had to take place so that tac­tics estab­lished dur­ing the res­o­lu­tion process could move forward.

The talks between Qandil and Demir­taş and the oth­er deputies and man­dat­ed ones are also in evi­dence. They all occur with autho­riza­tions. In fact, so as to avoid this pol­i­cy con­sti­tut­ing a crime, law n° 6551 was pro­mul­gat­ed. But when we look at it now, the accu­sa­tions in these tri­als, and some of the requests to revoke the man­date of elect­ed mem­bers, con­tain types of accu­sa­tions that may cause fric­tions between the MHP and the AKP.

• The tri­al aimed at the dis­so­lu­tion of the HDP, opened before the Con­sti­tu­ion­al Court by Bekir Şahin, a mem­ber of the AKP, named   pros­e­cu­tor of the Repub­lic before the Supreme Court on June 5 2020 by Erdoğan in per­son, but it was reject­ed by the mem­bers of the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Tri­bunal, who are also named by the Pres­i­dent, because “the rela­tion­ship was not estab­lished between the actions and the fact that the HDP became the ker­nel of the actions.” Some peo­ple inter­pret­ed this as an AKP-MHP con­flict. What was the objec­tive, in your opinion?

In fact, both forces agreed on the liq­ui­da­tion of Kur­dish pol­i­cy and that of the HDP. But there are dif­fer­ences depend­ing on spe­cif­ic polit­i­cal inter­ests, tim­ing, way of pro­ceed­ing and up to what point…During these last months, Bahçeli [Pres­i­dent of the MHP] has not ceased howl­ing for the dis­so­lu­tion of the HDP. He has trans­formed this demand into a severe injunc­tion. The AKP needs the MHP and vice-ver­sa. But there are con­flict­ing inter­est in this mat­ter of needs.

I think the AKP told itself “let’s go about the dis­so­lu­tion for the HDP through judi­cia­ry means” and brought the mat­ter up to the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court. But there are tac­tics with­in the tactics…By open­ing this tri­al, the AKP want­ed to cool down the MHP’s fire. How­ev­er, the con­sti­tu­tion­al court reporter, and the oth­er mem­bers, unan­i­mous­ly decid­ed to reject the act of accu­sa­tion. I con­sid­er this a diver­sion moti­vat­ed by the polit­i­cal con­text. On the one hand, the AKP want to be in the MHP’s good graces, but on the oth­er hand, it says “What can I do about it? The accu­sa­tion was sent”. So the AKP attempts to stretch out the process while the MHP insists on mov­ing it along.

The scuf­fle con­stin­ues… But there is an impor­tant point in the rea­sons for reject­ing the act of accu­sa­tion: it points to the causal­i­ty link. As we were say­ing ear­li­er, there is a motive for refus­ing it, that sig­nals the neces­si­ty of estab­lish­ing a causal link between the cas­es of deaths, wounds and oth­er prej­u­dices and the pol­i­cy, deci­sions and dec­la­ra­tions of the HDP, and to explain them. In fact, this jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is exact­ly what the High­er Cham­ber of the CEDH underlines.

The deci­sion is both in con­for­mi­ty with this and becomes an excuse to slow down the process. I think it is quite dif­fi­cult for a new attempt to be pre­pared. Because with this jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, there will be evi­dence that a deci­sion of dis­so­lu­tion can­not be based on the same motives.

But the polit­i­cal con­text evolves very quick­ly in Turkey. It is impos­si­ble to sur­mise what it will be in the com­ing peri­ods, it would be unrea­son­able to attempt a pronouncement.

Note from Kedistan

The next hear­ing of the Kobanê Tri­al was announced by the tri­bunal for May 3 2021.

Draw­ing: Ercan Altuntaş

Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
You may use and share Kedistan’s articles and translations, specifying the source and adding a link in order to respect the writer(s) and translator(s) work. Thank you.
KEDISTAN on EmailKEDISTAN on FacebookKEDISTAN on TwitterKEDISTAN on Youtube
KEDISTAN
Le petit mag­a­zine qui ne se laisse pas caress­er dans le sens du poil.