Turkey’s Treacherous Show Trials
As the hunger strike continues in Silivri, more and more people are arrested every week: journalists, anthropologists, writers, academics and elected officials of the BDP. The US State Department, in a report last year, placed the number of people imprisoned in the KCK case at 3,895. Since then, however, hundreds more have been taken in police round-ups around the country.The KCK case is merely one in a series of show trials against all sources of opposition to the government. Many military officers, ideologically opposed to the ruling party’s radically Islamic tendencies, were convicted this September in the “Balyoz” case, despite the fact that American, German and Turkish forensic scientists declared the main evidence used in the trial fraudulent. The Kemalists, heirs to the secularist and nationalist policies of the Republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, are being tried in the “Ergenekon” case, with similar accusations of falsified evidence and coerced witnesses.This is the atmosphere in which a new constitution is being forged, one which will guide the country far into the foreseeable future. Is this witch-trial mentality what will be enshrined in the country’s highest law?Turkey is ostensibly not a third-world dictatorship, but a NATO ally whose actions reflect on other members such as the United States. As well-funded public relations work and a healthy economy have helped steer attention away from the ruling party’s increasingly autocratic policies, the AKP continues to choke all critical voices in the press and elsewhere with sham trials, threats, and intimidation. From Baghdad to Cairo to Beirut, Turkey is a country the entire Middle East, and even the current US administration, apparently look up to as an example. Travelers in the region report widespread admiration for Erdogan and Turkish democracy.Is this really the model we want the region to follow? Jeffrey Wade Gibbs is an American writer and teacher who has been living in Istanbul for five years.
As the hunger strike continues in Silivri, more and more people are arrested every week: journalists, anthropologists, writers, academics and elected officials of the BDP. The US State Department, in a report last year, placed the number of people imprisoned in the KCK case at 3,895. Since then, however, hundreds more have been taken in police round-ups around the country.The KCK case is merely one in a series of show trials against all sources of opposition to the government. Many military officers, ideologically opposed to the ruling party’s radically Islamic tendencies, were convicted this September in the “Balyoz” case, despite the fact that American, German and Turkish forensic scientists declared the main evidence used in the trial fraudulent. The Kemalists, heirs to the secularist and nationalist policies of the Republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, are being tried in the “Ergenekon” case, with similar accusations of falsified evidence and coerced witnesses.This is the atmosphere in which a new constitution is being forged, one which will guide the country far into the foreseeable future. Is this witch-trial mentality what will be enshrined in the country’s highest law?Turkey is ostensibly not a third-world dictatorship, but a NATO ally whose actions reflect on other members such as the United States. As well-funded public relations work and a healthy economy have helped steer attention away from the ruling party’s increasingly autocratic policies, the AKP continues to choke all critical voices in the press and elsewhere with sham trials, threats, and intimidation. From Baghdad to Cairo to Beirut, Turkey is a country the entire Middle East, and even the current US administration, apparently look up to as an example. Travelers in the region report widespread admiration for Erdogan and Turkish democracy.Is this really the model we want the region to follow? Jeffrey Wade Gibbs is an American writer and teacher who has been living in Istanbul for five years.
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