Why is the Cumhuriyet trial complete nonsense? Akın Atalay explains with a single example: The restaurant where the parquet installer’s son dines.

Our newspaper’s Executive Board Chair, Akın Atalay, who has been in detention for 267 days as part of the operation aimed at silencing our paper, completed his defence at today’s hearing. One of the grounds cited for Atalay’s detention was that included in a Financial Crimes Investigation Board (FCIB) report was the restaurant where the son of the parquet installer whom Atalay paid 2500 lira six years ago to lay parquet in his home dined. Akın Atalay has said about these grounds: ‘We are confronted with a bizarre endeavour to create a connection that is really very hard to make sense of and is really very hard to believe.’ Here are the comments on the matter in Atalay’s defence:

‘It has been established from a search conducted in the FCIB data base into the individual named Hüseyin Aktaş, to whom an EFT in the amount of TRY 2,500.00 was sent through the transaction conducted on 28 March 2011, that Atilla Aktaş, who is the individual’s son, is among the natural persons to whom the company Boğaziçi (…) Ticaret Limited Company, owned by Şaban Aydın, one of the persons who was ascertained (...) in the analysis report number (...) sent by the FCIB Directorate to Ankara Republic Chief Prosecution to have sent money by means of transfers, EFTs and cash deposit transactions made to one another’s accounts so as to be withdrawn from ATMs abroad and who are thus related to one another, has sold goods and services.’

I wish to make an aside here and enter a sincere confession (!). From among the hundreds of allegations and documents within this indictment and its exhibits, this was the matter which I had the most difficulty comprehending and making sense of, explaining both to myself and others and finding a way, after much puzzlement, of accounting for.

We are confronted with a bizarre endeavour to create a connection that is really very hard to make sense of thanks to the way it is worded and set out and is really very hard to believe. Since I am unacquainted with the other persons and companies apart from Hüseyin Aktaş, to whom I sent TRY 2,500.00 by EFT on the 28^th day of March 2011, and have not the slightest knowledge of what business they are engaged in, for ease of reference, I will assume by way of presumption that Boğaziçi Ticaret Limited Company is a restaurant undertaking in Bursa and I need to rephrase the allegation bit by bit.

Hüseyin Aktaş, to whom I sent TRY 2,500.00 by EFT on 28 March 2011 is a parquet installer. A payment was due to him in return for parquet relaying work in the living room of the house I live in. The prosecutor sets out from this and to all intents and purposes says: ‘Oh, Akın Atalay, Hüseyin Aktaş whom you paid TRY 2,500.00 six and a half years ago in return for getting your parquet work done in your house has a son. His son’s name is Atilla. Now, one day this Atilla dines at a restaurant in Bursa. There is a FCIB report about Boğaziçi Ticaret Limited Company, which operates the restaurant at which he dined, and this company’s owner Şaban Aydın. Account for this!’ What am I to say?