Recently, in Turkey...
- Almost one hundred journalists, including globally famous ones like Nedim Şener and Ahmet Şık, were arrested. Although, the indictment made it clear that most of them were being prosecuted solely because of their professional activities (the books or stories that they've written or drafted), they are being accused of being the members of a "criminal organization" that tried to topple the government.
- Retired general Ilker Başbuğ, the former head of Turkey's armed forces, was arrested. The prosecution accused him of being the leader of a "criminal organization," which also tried to overthrow the government. Başbuğ was leading a military force with over 500.000 personnel until his retirement.
- Aziz Yıldırım, the president of Turkey’s reigning football champions Fenerbahçe, was arrested in a dubious probe on match-fixing. The alleged crime defines him as the leader of a "criminal organization." Yıldırım was known as one of the leading defense contractors in Turkey, working with NATO, too. He is still widely supported by millions of Fenerbahçe fans.
- There are scores of university students behind the prison bars, who were arrested while protesting the government for various reasons, such as yelling out for free education. Many of them are indicted for being members of criminal organizations and even terrorist ones.
* * *
Today, in Turkey...
A court in Istanbul has sentenced a man to life in prison for masterminding the killing of Hrant Dink, a leading Armenian-Turkish journalist, but cleared all 19 suspects in the five-year-old case, concluded that whole crime was a simple ultra-nationalist killing, unrelated to any kind of "criminal organization." "This ruling means a tradition was left untouched. The state tradition of political murders," unsatisfied Dink family announced today.
So, we have the whole picture now:
- Hrant Dink is in a cemetery.
- Nedim Şener, who has written a book about the intelligence failures before and after the Dink murder, is in a prison.
- And there are no criminal organizations in Turkey, except the ones that critical journalists, retired generals, football club presidents and dissident students have established to topple the government!
...I hope none of those pseudo-intellectuals in Turkey, who call themselves liberals and have been supporting the AKP government as a promising democratic force since 2002, would be regarded as the friends of Dink anymore.
Because the latest verdict -as well as the big picture in today's Turkey as a prospective police state- is their product, too...
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