Zaman: “Turkey might go back to the 1990s,” read the headline of the top story, saying that the government’s plan to revise an article regarding specially authorized courts has been the target of criticism by politicians and jurists. Noting that the result will be chaos in every trial, including coup trials, in the event that these special courts are abolished or their powers curtailed, the story said it will lead to gang members, drug traffickers and terror suspects being released. “In essence, Turkey will go back to the years of the 1990s,” the story said.
Radikal: “Evren at court, his spirit at school,” headlined the first page of the daily, reporting that an academic at Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, Lütfiye Bozdağ, who has been refusing to attend any official ceremony at the university since 2002 because former Chief of General Staff Kenan Evren, the chief perpetrator of the 1980 coup d’état, was also invited, has been expelled from the university. Evren is being tried at a court for leading the brutal takeover that shaped the country and traumatized the nation for three decades.
Habertürk: The major article of the paper covered statements made by Ahmet İyimaya, the head of the parliamentary Justice Commission, regarding much-contested governmental plans to revise an article that gives special authority to courts and prosecutors to investigate organized crime and coup plots. İyimaya spoke in favor of bringing restrictions to these special courts’ powers or abolishing these courts. “We made some arrangements to save the judiciary from tutelage; yet, judges have started to regard themselves as God,” he said.
