Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) MP Utku Cakırozer, visited prominent figures who were arrested as part of the investigation into the Gezi Park protests, and called upon Turkish government to release them immediately, Evrensel daily reported on Sunday.
The Gezi Park protests that started on May 28, 2013, aimed at defying Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasing drive for authoritarianism were initially the protests by the masses who were discontent with a project on the revival of a military barracks in Istanbul’s Taksim square, which also involved the destruction of trees in the nearby Gezi Park.
However, the protests spread countrywide after Erdogan’s increasingly divisive comments,
dismissing the protesters as “a few looters.”
Twenty-two people were killed and more than 8,000 injured during the clashes between the
protesters and the riot police.
Former CHP MP Eren Erdem, a Turkish businessman and rights activist Osman Kavala, human rights defender Yigit Aksakoglu, lawyer and human rights defender Selcuk Kozagaclı, and journalist and author Ahmet Altan were among those Cakırozer visited in the Silivri Prison, located in the Silivri district of Istanbul, on Sunday.
After the visit, Cakırozer emphasized that the detention conditions are difficult at the Silivri
Prison, and added: “It is unacceptable for politicians, lawyers, businesspeople, and non- governmental organizations’ members to be jailed for the things they’ve said or written.
Intellectuals of our country must be released immediately.”
Cakırozer delivered messages from the intellectuals he visited and spoke to on Sunday.
“If we are to have an independent and impartial judiciary, we must start with this case”
CHP MP Eren Erdem, who was jailed in June 2018 and sentenced to more than four years in
the prison said that Turkey should resolve the Gezi Park case to build a state of law.
“I file a petition every day, demanding my release. If we [Turkey] are to be a real state of
law, if we are to have an independent and impartial judiciary, we must start with this case. I
have to be released immediately,” Erdem said.
Erdem is accused of helping the Gulen movement, deemed as a terrorist organization by
Ankara.
“There’s nothing consistent or rational about the indictment prepared against us”
Osman Kavala, prominent businessman and philanthropist, has said that there is nothing
about the indictment on the 2013 Gezi protests that is consistent or rational.
An Istanbul Court accepted a 657-page indictment on the 2013 Gezi protests on March 4.
The charges relate to an attempt to overthrow the Turkish government.
Kavala, who has been in jail for 16 months, faces an aggravated life sentence on charges of
“financing and organizing” the protests.
“There are no real charges in the indictment”
Yigit Aksakoglu, a member of the Civil Society Education Department of Istanbul Bilgi University and Turkish representative of the Bernard van Leer Foundation in the Netherlands has claimed that there are no real charges in the indictment prepared against him.
Referring to the foundation’s projects to educate children in Turkey’s poor families and
reintegrate them into society, Aksakoglu said: “I was about to start a new project with
Gaziantep Mayor Fatma Sahin. I met her to discuss the project a week before my detention.
But now, she is one of the complainants in the indictment prepared against me.”
“There are no real charges in the indictment. For what are we going to defend ourselves?”
Aksakoglu asked.
“I destroyed prison walls with my book”
Ahmet Altan, a prominent journalist, and novelist in Turkey said that he destroyed the walls
of the Silivri Prison with a book he wrote in there.
“They have been keeping me here for two and a half years. But I destroyed the walls of this
prison with my book, which broke sales records throughout the world. They thought they
could silence me by putting me in prison, but now the whole world knows about the
injustices we face in here,” Altan said.
Altan’s book, “I Will Never See the World Again”, written behind bars, is a memoir about his
arrest, captivity and his urge to create.
“The charges filed against us are unlawful”
Lawyer and human rights defender Selcuk Kozagaclı, who faces more than 11 years in prison,
said that the charges filed against him and those like him are unlawful.
“We were put on trial by a court of judges who don’t even obey the rules of procedure,” Kozagaclı said.
The post Opposition MP calls on Turkish gov’t to release those jailed over Gezi Park protests appeared first on IPA NEWS.
from IPA NEWS https://ipa.news/2019/03/26/opposition-mp-calls-on-turkish-govt-to-release-those-jailed-over-gezi-park-protests/
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder