The trial has been continuing for the last three years. We, as the lawyers of the families of the victims, have long been demanding the Malatya Court join this case with the Ergenekon trial in İstanbul since we believe there are strong connections between these two cases.
Many developments have happened in this case. My intention though is not to suffocate you with all these details. Legally, we have not been able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that these two cases are connected. But from the first day of this trial, I personally know that these missionaries were killed as a part of the “big plan” prepared by deep state elements, namely -- as we know their name today -- Ergenekon. I will tell you the story of what has happened in my life since accepting the role of lawyer for the victims in this case.
Well, since I had been acting as a legal consultant for the Protestant community in Turkey for seven years at the time of the murders, I was asked to follow this case wherever it would lead. It was my duty to do so and I had no choice but to assume responsibility for this case.
After doing some preliminary work on the case, I had felt that it was much more complex than what it appeared to be at first glance. I then decided to invite some other human rights lawyers, who had worked on different cases in which deep state elements may have been involved, to work on the case. I wanted us to put our heads together and look at all deep state cases from different angles to detect if there were any similarities or commonalities between different cases. More than 20 human rights lawyers agreed to work on the case pro-bono. Later on, I understood that gathering all these lawyers together really scared the criminal network behind these murders.
The first sign that we had scared those behind the murders happened while we were doing some preliminary work on the case. An informant sent a letter to the Protestant community we were working with. In this letter, someone going by the name “Ali Aslan” was accusing high-ranking officers in the gendarmerie, a professor of theology and one of the directors of an ultranationalist party of conspiring to commit these murders. Someone was trying to direct our attention to certain connections. We sent this letter to the prosecutors.
The second and shocking sign came when we first went to Malatya a few days before the first hearing. We then realized that the local “media” had engaged in a negative publicity campaign against me and the legal team. It was quite surprising to see the hostility towards us. When we looked at some of the details presented in these “news stories” we came to the conclusion that much of the information contained in these stories could not have been gathered without intercepting our telephone conversations and electronic communications.
The tone, the style and the way the news stories were prepared clearly showed that the “writers” of such stories intended to encourage feelings of hostility toward us and that they were trying to portray us as if we were there for illegitimate purposes. These news stories and pieces began with titles such as “Is this a new game?” and continued in that vein in the text.
However, when we went into the details we realized we were not simply facing a bunch of hostile “journalists,” but that these were stories that had already been prepared and delivered. The details proved to us that it was very clear that “some circles” had wiretapped telephone conversations between members of the legal team and that they had somehow penetrated our e-group, which we used to discuss our legal strategies and to organize. The more we looked into the details of the stories, the more we were amazed.
The names of the lawyers who were going to come to Malatya for the hearing were given. There were only two (normal) ways of obtaining these names. One is to check the hotel reservation book and the other one is to look at the powers of attorney given to the court. They could have obtained most the names of the lawyers in this way, but not all of them. Some of the lawyers’ names were not in the registry of the hotel we stayed in nor had they presented a power of attorney to the court at that time. The only way in which it would have been possible to obtain those lawyers’ names was to check the list of the members of our legal team on our e-group, which was, of course, not public.
There were so many other similar details and instances that proved that our telephone conversations were being listened in on and used. They even knew who would attend the hearing and who would not without speaking with any of the members of our legal team or the Protestant community we were working with. These local newspapers even knew what kind of arguments we would raise before the court. After considering all these items, we came to the conclusion that somehow this news coverage had been prepared by some kind of “intelligence agency” or at least with their help. I will continue tomorrow.
