Turks Demand Democratic Rights — and Justice

Serious charges were leveled against him. He was accused of having taken part in an armed robbery at a currency exchange booth back in 1989, during which one person was killed. In the court proceedings, his lawyers Haydar Erol (Istanbul) and Ilias Uyar (Cologne) rejected all accusations, arguing that the key witnesses against the defendant had provided testimony under torture. Other witnesses, sons of the murder victim, initially thought they could identify Akhanli, but then retracted their statements. The accused was nonetheless thrown into prison. Finally, in December 2010, he was released and expelled from Turkey, and told he would not be allowed to enter the country again.

Associates and friends mobilized to defend him from what was obviously a politically-motivated campaign to silence him. Press coverage of his case appeared in Germany, the US and elsewhere. (Armenian Mirror-Spectator, September 11, 2010). A delegation of renowned human rights activists traveled to Istanbul for his trial, which took place in early December 2011. Under the combined pressure of international censure and the utter lack of any credible evidence against him, Akhanli (in absentia, because he was not allowed to enter the country) was acquitted on December 10. Since the Appeals Court did not take any steps to reverse the ruling, it held.

It held — that is, until April of this year. Out of the blue, the Turkish Appeals Court announced in a rush procedure, against the vote of the State Attorney, that the case against him had to be reopened. The court stated that it would seek a life sentence in the new trial. How? Why? On what grounds? Akhanli told the German press: “My defense lawyer at the time proved my innocence, the State Attorney did not prove my guilt. How do they now want to prove that I was the criminal? There is no new evidence.”

The court argued as follows: the fact that all the witnesses back in December 2010 pleaded for his innocence, and that they accused the authorities of manipulation and torture, was irrelevant. The only material of relevance, argued the Appeals Court, were the original police protocols from 1989 to 1992 and witness testimony submitted at that time — that is, testimony submitted under torture. Furthermore, they claimed that an organization in which Akhanli allegedly belonged posed a threat to Turkey — even though the organization ceased to exist in 1993.

The news struck like a thunderbolt. In Germany, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung — the newspaper of record, comparable to the New York Times — published an article by Karen Krueger, who follows developments in Turkey, titled, “He Who Is Supposed To be a Criminal Will Be Made Into a Criminal.” She commented that “it looks as though the Turkish judicial authorities have nothing better to do than to re-open cases that have long since been closed.” She referred to the case of Pinar Selek, a Turkish human rights activist living in France, who after having been acquitted several times on trumped-up charges, was recently convicted in absentia and sentenced to life. She is now consigned to a permanent exile abroad. The same fate awaits Akhanli.

Why should the Turkish authorities indeed spend their time and efforts on such cases? Journalist Krueger suggest that the reason why the authorities want to push ahead regardless of the irrationality of their effort has to do with the growing impact of Akhanli’s work. She reports on his recent activities in Turkey, including an article in a well-known magazine, Birikim, in which he wrote about the significance of the Hardenbergstrasse in Berlin, a street in the capital that has been the site of historic events, among them the assassination of Talaat Pasha in 1921. “Perhaps,” Akhanli is quoted saying, “this report angered some people in Turkey.” The writer’s associates have also stated that the appeals judges want to suffocate the fruitful exchange between the writer and his homeland, an intellectual exchange which is vital for him as well as for Turkey.