You can achieve nothing by keeping our colleagues in jail

This government got it so wrong.
The result of the wrong business it got up to with the wrong partner was that its partnership turned to enmity and the enemy’s ruthless struggle has dragged Turkey to a very wrong place.
It based its foreign policy on errors and, not satisfied with this, applied the errors incorrectly. If this one day proves possible, it will take generations to correct the error.
This government saw the historic joint project that would take the country’s development to a sustainable level and its law and democracy to high standards in the interests of maintaining social peace in Turkey as a horse that it could mount to cross the torrential stream in front of it. It crossed the stream and gave the horse a slap on the hindquarters. It was a huge mistake.
Over the years, this government has opted and seen fit as an unbending political line to make new mistakes to wipe out memory of its mistakes, to overcome the crises it has caused by hatching new crises and to swap negative agendas for more negative agendas.
And where has it gone as a result of this?
The reply is simple and short: to a place from which there is no return.
Mentioning a place, this is a downward-looking place.
The government, making mistake upon mistake, has imprisoned itself within the downward boring dynamic of its own creation and cannot now get out. The boring motion gains momentum over time. The country’s attributes that can be compared and measured are on an accelerating downward trajectory.
The destruction is self-perpetuating.
This momentum brings with it enhanced risk for those in power, because there is so much disarray and disquiet. The closed system has lost its capacity to create solutions and the trapped heat is rising. Inspired by the second law of thermodynamics, one could well name this situation “political entropy”.
The beauty of democracies lies in their ability to facilitate change. And this is through democratic, fair, free and trustworthy elections. The destructive heat that the disorderliness within the political system creates is reduced thanks to this legitimate mechanism of political change and the system is enabled to continue.
Our government, having blocked the way for change, cannot prevent the system from breaking up as a result of entropy and can only delay this with temporary and stopgap “cooling measures”. And only up to a point.
The government has condemned itself to non-change.
Consequently, however much voices at home and abroad tell it, “Ease off a bit,” “Tone it down,” “Make reforms” or “Return to the law,” it cannot ease off, tone down, make reforms or return to the law.
For, it knows that, if it eases off, tones down, makes reforms or returns to the law, it will lose. And lose it will. On losing, it will also lose the world. It thus imagines that it can only maintain its existence with naked force.
This is how it has always been. There are examples in the world in the recent past.
You know, they and we are telling the government, “Release the imprisoned journalists.”
I wish to renew this call once more in view of the hearing of the Cumhuriyet trial that will be held at the Silivri Prison compound on 9 March. Our colleagues Akın Atalay and Murat Sabuncu have been held unjustly and unlawfully in prison for 492 days, as has Ahmet Şık for 431 days.
Release our colleagues.
I said five and a half months ago on exiting Silivri Prison:
“The benefit the will that sticks the Cumhuriyet people in jail seeks from this game has expired and, if it has executed its judgment, so be it.” And I was right, and now I am more right. In the Turkey of 2018, the conditions for the government and the entire country have become so arduous and the interests that must be risked at the gaming table are so great that there remain no compensating rewards in these equations for keeping these three colleagues of ours, who were thrown in jail in the final months of 2016, there any longer.
I repeat the same words emphatically with the added weight of the considerable length of time that has passed: release our colleagues at last.
Additionally, I feel the need to say that if you release Akın Atalay, Murat Sabuncu and Ahmet Şık, you will have neither eased off, toned down nor returned to the law.
So, what I am saying is you will not lose anything.
I consider it demeaning to voice a most just, legitimate, lawful and human rights-based demand from the angle of a naked force equation.
Unfortunately, in wishing for the release of our colleagues, I have given up trying to achieve anything by expressing this demand based on rhetoric that is not couched in terms of gross political power and interests but is founded in humanity’s common values, and I no longer think it will even be heard.