{"id":22513,"date":"2018-12-02T11:38:39","date_gmt":"2018-12-02T16:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=22513"},"modified":"2018-12-02T11:38:39","modified_gmt":"2018-12-02T16:38:39","slug":"turkey-three-peace-activist-academics-handed-down-fifteen-month-deferred-sentences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2018\/12\/turkey-three-peace-activist-academics-handed-down-fifteen-month-deferred-sentences\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey: Three Peace Activist Academics Handed Down Fifteen-Month Deferred Sentences"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Originally published in Evrensel<\/em>, 11\/23\/2018.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The cases of four academics being tried on the charge of \u201cmaking terrorist organization propaganda\u201d for having signed the declaration headed \u201dWe will not be party to this crime\u201d were heard at two separate courts. Three academics appearing before the judges at Istanbul Serious Crime Court No 36 were each sentenced to fifteen-month jail terms.<\/p>\n

The prosecutions continue of academics who signed the peace declaration headed \u201dWe will not be party to this crime\u201d seeking an end to rights violations and ongoing conflict at the time of curfews in the Kurdish provinces. Assistant Professor Dr M.T.T., whose second hearing was heard at Istanbul Serious Crime Court No 26, submitted a defence. M.T.T., an academic at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, stated that the peace text bearing the assistant professor\u2019s signature was more \u201cinnocuous\u201d than the implementations in the solution process.<\/p>\n

M.T.T. said, \u201cThere was the Peace Association trial in the 12 September period. At that time, too, there was an international peace organization hosted by the Republic of Turkey. This organization\u2019s concern was \u2018peace\u2019 and this was translated into Turkish, not as \u2018peace\u2019, but as \u2018tranquillity\u2019! Be it named peace, or be it tranquillity, or be it given another Turkish counterpart, there can be no tranquillity, silence, repose and comfort in a place where there is no peace. Hence, wishing for peace is not a crime. I ask to be acquitted immediately in the hope that our call for peace, and thereby peace, will be prosecuted no more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWE THINK THAT THE SCALES OF JUSTICE HAVE ERRED\u201d<\/h3>\n

Following M.T.T., the academic\u2019s lawyer Mehmet Fatih Kayagil addressed the court. Criticizing the indictment, Attorney Kayagil spoke of the existence of material errors. Submitting to the court the \u201cASDER-ASSAM report at the stage reached by the peace process\u201d published in 2015, Kayagil noted that there were sentences favourable to the PKK in the report in which quotes by figures such as B\u00fclent Ar\u0131n\u00e7, Yi\u011fit Bulut, Mehmet Metiner and Be\u015fir Atalay were also included. Kayagil stated that Mesut Akg\u00fcn wrote an article in Star newspaper in 2015 and made the pronouncements \u201cTurkey must give arms aid to the PKK\u201d in this article, and this article is still present on the site. At this, presiding judge Yusuf Y\u0131lmaz noted the name of the newspaper and the journalist who made the report, asking for them to be repeated. Noting that no investigation had even been launched into the authors of the ASDER-ASAM report and the said article, Kayagil continued, \u201cWe respect freedom of thought and expression and we are most certainly not calling for an investigation to be launched against these people. We simply think that, with proceedings initiated over this declaration in which the same words appear, the scales of justice have erred.\u201d The court bench ordered the joinder of the case with the other academics\u2019 cases before it.<\/p>\n

\u201cTHE CHARGES ARE NOT SUPPORTED WITH HARD EVIDENCE\u201d<\/h3>\n

Elsewhere, the trial of three academics was heard at Istanbul Serious Crime Court No 36. The first hearing at the Serious Crime Court was that of Istanbul University faculty member G\u00fcven G\u00fcrkan \u00d6ztan. At the previous session, \u00d6ztan\u2019s lawyers Sevgi Kalan G\u00fcvercin and Ali Deniz Ceylan had sought the recusal of the bench. Presiding judge Hakan \u00d6zer said Serious Crime Court No 37 had dismissed the application for recusal. The hearing prosecutor repeated his recommendations on the merits and sought \u00d6ztan\u2019s imprisonment for \u201cmaking organizational propaganda.\u201d Rejecting the charges, \u00d6ztan asked to be acquitted. One of \u00d6ztan\u2019s lawyers, Sevgi Kalan G\u00fcvercin, stating that the material elements of the offence had not been constituted, said with examples from European Court of Human Rights rulings that the action had to be treated as an instance of freedom of expression. Setting out with a reference in his defence to the words of his colleague \u0130nayet Aksu, Attorney Ali Deniz Ceylan for his part said, \u201cWe see in these proceedings that unfortunately the words of the defence are not equal to the words of the prosecution.\u201d He stated that the charges were not supported with hard evidence, while they as the defence had compiled pages of defence in a detailed manner. Passing sentence, the bench handed down a fifteen-month jail term to \u00d6ztan. It deferred sentencing.<\/p>\n

THE COURT SUSPENDED THE SENTENCE ON AN INTIMATE CONVICTION<\/h3>\n

The second hearing at Serious Crime Court No 36 was that of Prof. Dr G\u00fclhan T\u00fcrkay.<\/p>\n

Speaking with regard to the merits, G\u00fclhan T\u00fcrkay indicated that she did not accept the charges and asked to be acquitted. T\u00fcrkay did not wish for deferral of sentencing provisions to be applied if the court passed sentence.<\/p>\n

T\u00fcrkay\u2019s lawyer Emel Atakt\u00fcrk also called for her client\u2019s acquittal. The court bench handed down a fifteen-month sentence to T\u00fcrkay. The court, unable to implement deferral of sentencing provisions in the absence of the accused\u2019s consent, suspended the sentence by placing T\u00fcrkay on two years\u2019 probation pursuant to Article 51\/3 of the Turkish Penal Code on the grounds that, \u201cthe accused has no criminal record and the intimate conviction was formed that she would not recommit crimes if the sentence were suspended in view of her past demeanour.\u201d It imposed no obligation on the accused as per paragraph six of the same article. As to the form, probation will take, the Probation Office will decide. Should T\u00fcrkay commit a crime while on probation, the imposed sentence may be partially or fully applied?<\/p>\n

As to the final hearing at Serious Crime Court No 36, this was that of Marmara University\u2018s Prof. Dr R\u0131za T\u00fcrkay. Asking for his acquittal, T\u00fcrkay consented to deferral of sentencing provisions being applied if there was a sentence.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published in Evrensel, 11\/23\/2018. The cases of four academics being tried on the charge of \u201cmaking terrorist organization propaganda\u201d for having signed the declaration..<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37490,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[284],"class_list":["post-22513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-turkey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redphoenix.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/123835.jpg?fit=730%2C487&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}