Journalists on trial: Who is to blame?
by Orhan Kemal Cengiz

Some of these cases are related to the Kurdish question. Turkish courts tend to interpret the meaning of being member of an illegal organization and disseminating propaganda for it quite loosely. So there are some journalists who are on trial or in prison for their alleged support for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) with articles and news coverage published in some newspapers. This is a long-standing, ongoing problem.

There are some journalists who are on trial or in prison in connection with Ergenekon, the deep state case. As I tried to explain in recent columns, I believe a few of these journalists are accused of being members of Ergenekon based on quite weak and unconvincing evidence, while the rest are facing the serious charge of being a member of Ergenekon and playing roles in planned coups against the government. Given the fact that some journalists took part in former military coups, these allegations are not surprising for Turkey.

When, however, we mention journalists on trial, we refer to quite a different category in Turkey. Most of the journalists who are being tried now are actually pro-government and support the Ergenekon case. I am also being investigated in one of these cases by an İstanbul prosecutor, just because of my comments on a television channel. I said on this program that I believe the Cage plan was real and that Christians were targeted by Ergenekon. Some Ergenekon suspects complained about me to the prosecutor, saying that I was “trying to influence a fair trial,” a crime under Article 288 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK). This article is one of the most frequently invoked against journalists. The other article most journalists, including many correspondents from Zaman and Today’s Zaman, are put on trial for is 285, which concerns the “secrecy of an investigation.” After the initiation of the Ergenekon case in 2007, tens of thousands of cases were brought against journalists under these two articles. If you support the case, like I do, you are “trying to influence a fair trial;” if you publish statements or documents from the Ergenekon case, then you are breaching the “secrecy of the investigation.”

Here we come to a quite confusing point. We have a government in power that supports the Ergenekon case to make deep state elements accountable; yet in this Turkey, there are thousands and thousands of cases against journalists who somehow support this case with the comments and news they have prepared.

If you ask government circles, they would most probably place the entire responsibility on “others,” saying that the judiciary still represents the former status quo in Turkey, the judiciary is still influenced by Kemalist elites and so on and so forth. This excuse is to a certain extent true but just represents half of the truth.

Yes it is true, there has been and still is a judiciary in Turkey that interprets laws and regulations in a quite restricting fashion. Some segments of the judiciary may still be quite sympathetic towards the idea of military guardianship over the system, and thus, they might be quite allergic to the journalists who support the Ergenekon case.

But none of this absolves this government from their responsibilities over these cases. These two articles may be interpreted in a terribly restricting, bureaucratic manner by the judiciary to bring cases against journalists, but they are also very badly written, and they are open to this kind of restrictive interpretation. The two articles I mentioned just came into force as part of a new TCK that was prepared and introduced by this government in 2005.

It is a real enigma why this government does not bother itself to change the articles. By just adding a few extra sentences to these articles, their scope of application could be narrowed down, and then a couple of thousands cases would be dropped automatically. Parliament could do this in a couple of hours.

Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdoğan reacted quite strongly against recent reports that criticized the level of press freedom in Turkey. He thinks the situation is exaggerated. I think there is real exaggeration out there, and it is the ability to put blame on others on matters in which you have a serious responsibility.