To tell the tale briefly, a mouse and frog become friends and are almost inseparable due to their common pursuits and interests. Since their amphibian and land lives do not permit much interaction, they decide to establish a link between them with a string tied to each one’s leg. Whenever one wants to see the other, it pulls its end of the string and thus informs the other of its desire to meet. In this way they manage to meet and talk. One day, a farmer is hunting with a hawk to protect his fields and crops from vermin. The hawk spots the mouse, swoops down and catches it in its talons and flies into the air. The frog on the other end of the string is caught unaware and pulled out of the water high into the air. The hawk then devours both the mouse and the frog.Rumi told this story to express the interaction and compatibility of the desires and ambitions of the human body and soul as well as the hazards of this connection. But our parents also told this story for the benefit of our childish understanding to warn us to be careful about making friends. Some associations may end in mutual demise even if one is on land and the other in water.
The instrumentalization of the Turkish judiciary in the ultimate power game reflects Rumi’s morality tale very well. If we take the latest incident in the Sledgehammer investigation, the parallel becomes very clear. In this incident, İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor Aykut Cengiz Engin dealt a blow to the Sledgehammer prosecutors, who had moved to detain military suspects with court orders. Engin promptly replaced the prosecutors, who were performing their duty correctly in investigating those military officers. Legal scholars and the public have severely criticized him because Engin’s office is not authorized to do this and because there was no legal justification for his action.
Meanwhile, in the course of the Sledgehammer investigation, a particular judge released 22 “distinguished” suspects from detention only for a panel of seven judges to reverse his decision and denounce their colleague in the same court. When the prosecutors filed investigation papers again and the panel of judges had the same people arrested for the second time, Engin interfered once more and replaced the prosecutors in the investigation again. Three times since the beginning of the investigation into the military plot to overthrow the government Engin has intervened in this way.
However, now it appears that some suspects or their friends who were not happy to see that military personnel are always released while the civilians who are their alleged accomplices linger in detention have revealed recordings of an outrageous exchange between Engin and Tuncay Özkan, a detainee in the Ergenekon case. In the recordings, which were discovered in one Ergenekon suspect’s archive and publicized in the media, Engin tells Özkan that he has been “conducting an investigation based on Özkan’s directions.” Engin also asks Özkan to prepare some questions for some investigations and to send them some documents connected with it. Engin has confirmed that this conversation took place. Even though this was some years ago, it highlights the cooperation between a chief prosecutor and a member of the Ergenekon terror organization, or the Turkish Gladio. So when the prosecutors snatch an Ergenekon mouse, the judicial frog finds himself dangling by one leg, perilously exposed above his comfortable watery home.
As long as some members of the judiciary continue to act against or outside the law and interpret their own acts in the most favorable light according to arbitrary rather than legal interpretations, Turkey will continue to suffer from the lack of accountability of the judiciary and the unmerited privilege and impunity of many of its unelected officials.
Arbitrary and ideological interventions by the judiciary leave no doubt about the profound need for reform in the judiciary. The changes envisioned by the new reform package may be limited in their form and content, but it is essential to make a move in the right direction of progress and reform. Turkey needs a judicial system and a new constitution that deserves national and international respect and admiration. We must suppose that the judiciary and the schemers implicated in the ongoing probes into coups and plots, those beings of two seemingly incompatible worlds, did not listen to wise Sufi tales when they were small. Otherwise, we would not have been condemned to listen thus far to the constant croaking of the frog and the squeaking of the mouse in and around our small pond.
