ATK issues report allowing Zere's release from jail

The first news of the change in Zere’s status came not from the interior or justice ministers but from Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. Davutoğlu has reportedly been closely following Zere’s case and paid a call to her father yesterday to give him the news of the report’s release. Listening to the Zere family’s grievances and their request that their daughter be released immediately, Davutoğlu stated that the matter would again be brought up with the president but recalled that the final say in the case rested in the hands of President Abdullah Gül alone. Earlier this month while Davutoğlu was abroad on business in Brussels, members of the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C), to which Zere had belonged, stood up and shouted slogans demanding “freedom for Güler Zere,” interrupting the foreign minister’s speech. “Güler Zere is our child, not yours. All Gülers are our children, and they will not die,” Davutoğlu had said, before going on with his speech.

Güler Zere

The ATK was supposed to release its decision on the Zere case on Aug. 27. Over the past week, many protests and sit-ins in support of Zere and against the ATK were organized in İstanbul, Elazığ, Hatay, Adana, Malatya and Antalya, many of them in front of provincial headquarters of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party). Protestors noted that the ATK is subordinate to the Justice Ministry, asking why the justice minister had not consulted with the ATK over the delay.

Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin also made a statement yesterday morning, saying the report regarding Zere’s possible amnesty had been completed on Wednesday night and conveyed by courier to the Elbistan Prison where Zere is interned and would in all likelihood reach the Çankaya Presidential Palace yesterday, also dispatched by courier.

ATK President Dr. Haluk İnce, speaking to NTV yesterday, said the report on Zere would be sent to the presidency for consideration of a pardon from prison. “The evaluations [leading up to the report’s publishing] show that the patient’s illness has advanced and that there is no chance for recovery. This report will be sent to President Abdullah Gül for consideration pursuant to the presidential pardon process,” he said. İnce also commented on Zere’s condition in the process leading up to the report’s release, asserting that she had received the best of medical care thanks to the efforts of the ATK and the Çukurova University Medical School Hospital. “Everything necessary was done for this patient at each and every treatment phase. … She was in no way under prison-like conditions,” he said.

The ATK chief also said the report had been prepared in an expeditious fashion, not delayed unnecessarily as Zere supporters have alleged. “We only did one thing here: We released the report and had it signed off by the appropriate authorities in a very quick manner. Political pressure or concerns did not have any effect on this report nor was its production a priority out of such considerations. … Nearly 85 days ago a [Zere supporter’s] tent was set up outside our institution [the İstanbul ATK], and all of our employees have been harassed in one way or another. If we just issued a report upon the demand of everyone that set up a tent, what meaning would our medical identity have left?” he said.

As of yesterday afternoon, supporters of Zere expressed bittersweet satisfaction with the report, while insisting that had Zere been released three months ago there would have been a possibility of her recovering with the aid of family and friends inspiring in her a will to live.

Zere’s lawyer, Oya Aslan, has announced that the prisoner’s legal team put in a request yesterday that instead of being granted a presidential pardon that Zere’s prison sentence be delayed until her medical condition improves, a demand that would have paved the way for Zere’s immediate release. But prosecutors in Elbistan rejected the request, drawing criticism from Aslan who said the prosecutors are to be blamed if Zere dies while waiting for a presidential pardon. A group gathered outside the İstanbul ATK late yesterday afternoon demanding that Zere be released immediately, seeing how the ATK report had yet to result in the woman’s discharge from prison.