What Ahmet was making was not a threat, just an assessment

The extent to which we as citizens of this country have grown accustomed to the strangeness of our times, the slaying of the law or, indeed, the total break with reason and logic is made that much clearer when we try to explain them to a foreigner. Try as hard as you will, you cannot explain it and they simply do not get it.

For a foreigner, the fact that a journalist who is currently in jail is still on trial for a speech he made when previously exiting a jail is sufficiently dumbfounding. Let us move on and inquire what he said to warrant prosecution. He said that the participants in the conspiracy which landed him in prison would one day enter that prison. The foreigner, who has managed to follow things somewhat this far, reasons with a healthy mind: Almost all the judges and prosecutors who made the complaint have now been expelled from the profession and have been remanded or are on the run. So, yes, what the journalist said has come true. Why, then, is he inside just now? To top it all, one of the crimes he is accused of is making propaganda for the ‘gang’ he is being prosecuted for threatening. When you throw this in, total confusion reigns. Two of the journalist’s lawyers are also in prison awaiting the day when their indictments are drafted for the same crime in another case. The prosecutor in that case is also being prosecuted for being a member of the same gang. The problem here does not have to do with language.

 

He explained it to the judge

Ahmet Şık, following thirteen months on remand, was released in the evening of 12 March 2012 with a frost in the air that made your cheekbones throb. The front of the gate was thronged with his friends and an army of TV people who were waiting to broadcast it live. As soon as he emerged, he ignored questions of the type, ‘What did you miss most inside?’ that were heaped on him: There was a particular message he wanted to get across. Where would he find himself in front of so many cameras again? (And he has not.) He said that those who cooked up this conspiracy, the police officers, judges and prosecutors who were Gülen brotherhood members and operated with this gang mentality, would one day enter that prison and pointed to the AKP as having political responsibility for all this.

Yesterday, Şık was taken from Silivri Prison and lead into the Silivri Judicial Complex, into the tiny courtroom with six spectators’ chairs, to stand trial for that speech he made in front of Silivri Prison. The judge, who said, ‘I learnt of my assignment at eleven o’ clock this morning,’ said that he needed time to examine the file. ‘I will summarise it for you,’ said Şık: A politically fantastic summary entered the records.

Today’s lackeys

He said that he did not threaten anyone that day, but made an assessment. He turned out to be right. He said he is incapable of putting on curses as an atheist. He does not engage in soothsaying because he is not a charlatan who trades in religion. What he said were concrete facts deriving from the synthesis of his political experiences. He then moved on to make other predictions from this synthesis: At that time there were judges and prosecutors who acted as the Gülen brotherhood’s lackeys and now there are judges and prosecutors who have assumed the role of acting as lackeys with the pro-AKP stance they take. That is why he is on remand just now. The fate that befell those judges and prosecutors will also befall the judges and prosecutors who today have undertaken to act as the ruling force’s lackeys. The judges and prosecutors who have undersigned the lawlessness that he currently faces will also enter the Silivri Concentration Camp.

Due to the small size of the courtroom, a small square television was mounted on the wall right between the words ‘justice’ and ‘foundation’ in the slogan ‘Justice is the foundation of the state.’ So what is justice the foundation of again?