Kadri Enis Berberoğlu (62) is a Turkish journalist, writer, and politician. He is a deputy, member of party assembly, and the deputy chairman of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People Party (CHP).
Berberoğlu was arrested by a Turkish court on June 14, 2017 over allegations that he allegedly gave the images of a security operation, which interrupted the trucks belonged to Turkey’s notorious National Intelligence Organisation (MİT) that carried weapons and ammunition to the jihadist rebel groups in Syria, to journalist Can Dündar, who was then editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet daily.
The court had ruled to sentence Berberoğlu 25 years in prison. Normally, parliamentarians have legislative immunity in Turkey. Therefore, the investigation and trial proceedings must be suspended until the end of his term in the Parliament. However, a temporary constitutional amendment that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan succeeded to pass in the Parliament with the help of the CHP to arrest the pro-Kurdish Democratic Peoples’ Party (HDP) deputies pawed the way for the arrest of the CHP’s Berberoğlu, too. By supporting the anti-democratic change in the constitution in order to arrest the HDP deputies, the CHP and its leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu also led to the arrest of their deputy Berberoğlu.
Enis Berberoğlu was convicted at the İstanbul 14th High Criminal Court for allegedly giving images of MİT trucks to journalist Dündar. The court sentenced Berberoğlu to 25 years in prison for allegedly “exposing the state secrets, that must be kept for the sake of the state’s security and its interior and international political interests, as part of political and military espionage.” With this ruling, the court had confirmed that the AKP government sent weapons to Syria, but classified them as the state secret.
A regional court of appeals, which re-examined the case over an appeal, sentenced Enis Berberoğlu to 5 years and 10 months imprisonment this time not on the offense of “espionage” but for allegedly “exposing the information that should be kept secret in terms of security and internal or external political benefits of the state. However, the prosecutor’s office insisted on punishing his alleged action as espionage and applied to the Court of Cassation. It still waits that the Court of Cassation’s 16th Criminal Chamber to examine the appeal and to rule on the case.
Berberoğlu was again elected deputy in the general election on June 24, 2018. The common view of the lawyers is that he is now out of the scope of the related temporary article. However, the Court of Cassation and the Constitutional Court, which were redesigned after the controversial coup attempt on July 15, 2016, rejected all requests to benefit parliamentary immunity on the behalf of Berberoğlu. However, Prof. Dr. İzzet Özgenç, who is one of the law professors who prepared the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) that the AKP government enacted in 2005, says these top court rulings are wrong.
Özgenç has said that “The temporary article added to the Constitution is not a general regulatory provision and limited to certain activities. There is no doubt in the case of Berberoğlu that the articles in the Constitution that say ‘the investigation and prosecution of the re-elected deputy depend on the removal of the parliament’s immunity again,’ are still valid. We do not see the result obtained in the decision of the 16th Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Cassation legally correct.”
Prof. Dr. Özgenç has also made an assessment in a post in his personal Twitter account and argued that in order to continue to try Berberoğlu his immunity should be lifted by the Turkish Parliament again.
The Constitutional Court has also rejected an appeal made by Berberoğlu saying that his imprisonment has “violated his right to freedom and security” and “his right to be elected on the grounds that he failed to perform his duties as a deputy.” However, the same court had previously responded favorably to the demands of CHP deputies Tuncay Özkan and Mustafa Balbay in the same situation. This contradictory situation is attributed to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s personal anger on the exposition of MİT trucks which carried weapons and ammunition to the radical Islamist/jihadist groups in Syria.
Another contradiction in the decision of the court has been its privileged approach to the neo-nationalist Aydınlık newspaper, which published the same story about 15 months before the Cumhuriyet daily. An indictment was also prepared against the Aydınlık newspaper immediately after the public reactions following the court cases opened against Can Dündar and Berberoğlu. However, much lower penalties were demanded on the grounds that “there was no connection with the FETÖ.”
“FETÖ” is a derogatory term coined by the ruling AKP and President Erdoğan to refer to the Gülen movement. Although deputy Berberoğlu was quickly condemned, the case against the Aydınlık newspaper has not yet begun and no one from that newspaper has been detained.
Kadri Enis Berberoğlu, who is one of the leading journalism in the economy news in Turkish media, is a graduate of Austrian High School and Boğaziçi University’s department of economics. He has also a master degree in econometrics. Berberoğlu worked as a columnist for Dünya, Hürriyet and Radikal newspapers. He also worked as an economics editor on CNN Türk TV. He worked as the editor-in-chief of Hürriyet daily, which he has been Ankara bureau chief for many years.
Berberoğlu was elected for the CHP’s Party Assembly during the 18th extraordinary congress held in Ankara between September 5-6, 2014. He was appointed by CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as Vice-Chairperson Responsible for Communication and Media Relations on September 14, 2014.
He is married to journalist Oya Berberoğlu and has a daughter. Berberoğlu, who speaks German and English, wrote numbers of books including “Susurluk: 20 Year Old Domino Game (Susurluk: 20 Yıllık Domino Oyunu),” “Code Name: Yüksekova — Susurluk, Ankara, Bodrum, Yüksekova Fault Line (Kod Adı: Yüksekova. Susurluk, Ankara, Bodrum, Yüksekova Fay Hattı),” and “The Other Turks (Öbür Türkler).”
His wife Oya Berberoglu said that she has expected the justice to manifest itself for a long time, however, unfortunately, she has been disappointed with the continuation of unlawfulness in their case for two and a half years. She continued to say the following:
“We have always been journalists who have advocated for the parliamentary immunity. Our principles are clear. Enis has not committed any crime. With an allegation over he has given an old-news to a journalist by showing no evidence he was sentenced to life imprisonment. A regional court of appeals has reduced his sentence to 25 years and 10 months.
“The pending trial is essential in the law, however even this principle was not applied to him. The 16th Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals has ignored his constitutional parliamentary immunity despite the fact that he was re-elected as a deputy. As a political prisoner in solitary confinement, he has passed 15 months in prison.
“We have always trusted in rights, laws, and justice. But now my trust is in erosion. Unfortunately, there is a (judicial) structure that changes according to the political wind. This cannot be seen as a real judiciary and a legal system. Neither the rule of law nor the separation of powers is all in their place! All have been destroyed. The universal law, the provisions of the Constitution are under the feet. As a citizen, I am so sorry on behalf of my country”
Enis Berberoğlu has decided to protest the arbitrary approaches of the judiciary by not defending himself before the court and not to use his other rights. He said that “I thought over how would I react to the violation of my constitutional rights by the 16th Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals. As a result, I have decided to not use my rights to the open meetings with my family, lawyers, and the members of parliament. I have also decided not to use the right to defend myself before the court and to cut communicating outside. It is so natural that this difficult decision will not make my family, my lawyers, my party and those who love me happy. Therefore I have to implement this decision as independent from them and even against the will of them. But everyone should know that my intention is not to upset them, on the contrary, to protect them.”
The Berberoğlu case is one of the example cases showing the end of the rule of law in Turkey. But more importantly, the AKP government and President Erdoğan seem to commit suicide in regard to the international law. Through this awkward case, the Turkish government has declared to the whole world that ‘there were weapons and ammunition in those MİT trucks and the state was sending them to the jihadist rebel groups in Syria.”
Turkey is ranked 157th among 180 countries in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). If Turkey falls two more places, it will make it to the list of countries on the blacklist, which have the poorest record in press freedom.
Turkey is the biggest jailer of journalists in the world. The most recent figures documented by SCF show that 237 journalists and media workers were in jail as of August 15, 2018, most in pretrial detention. Of those in prison 169 were under arrest pending trial while only 68 journalists have been convicted and are serving their time. Detention warrants are outstanding for 145 journalists who are living in exile or remain at large in Turkey.
Detaining tens of thousands of people over alleged links to the Gülen movement, the government also closed down some 200 media outlets, including Kurdish news agencies and newspapers, after a coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016.
The post Case of jailed CHP deputy, journalist Berberoğlu confirms end of rule of law in Turkey appeared first on Stockholm Center for Freedom.
from Stockholm Center for Freedom https://stockholmcf.org/case-of-jailed-chp-deputy-journalist-berberoglu-confirms-end-of-rule-of-law-in-turkey/
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