Delayed justice

The Revolutionary Path (Dev-Yol) trial, which had hundreds of defendants and was prolonged and invalid due to the fact that it exceeded the statute of limitations, was just one of the exceptions. A much more special exception was made for two people found guilty of a murder committed in 1978.

In 1978 seven young members of the Turkish Workers’ Party (TİP), who defended socialism with non-violent methods and stayed in a house in Ankara’s Bahçelievler district, were murdered. These murders, which went down in history as the “Bahçelievler Massacre,” were discussed a lot. Abdullah Çatlı, who died in the well-known “Susurluk Accident” in 1996, is believed to be the organizer of the massacre. The Susurluk Accident became an important piece of evidence of illegal practices within the state. It triggered a number of investigations.

The score remained uneven as the two people sentenced in the “Bahçelievler trial” of 1978 were still in prison. Ünal Osmanağaoğlu and Bünyamin Adanalı were the only two people still imprisoned due to pre-Sept. 12 incidents. The reason these two people were kept in prison so long was because there were different judgments regarding the penalties imposed in the clashes between leftists and rightists. There were similar murders committed by the leftists also, like the slaughter of five rightist laborers in their house in Ümraniye in 1979 and the murder of six teachers in Adana in 1980. The courts imposed capital punishment on leftists by defining their crime as “attempting to change the constitutional order.” As for rightists, referring to the crime as “establishing an armed gang,” the courts imposed seven counts of capital punishment for each of the murdered individuals.

When capital punishment was abolished, it was replaced with aggravated life imprisonment and then replaced by imprisonment with the possibility of amnesty. After the change, all of the leftists who were sentenced to a single count of capital punishment, which eventually became a sentence of imprisonment with the possibility of an amnesty, were released in 1999 at the latest. The aforementioned two defendants who received seven counts of capital punishment for the killing of the seven TİP members continued to serve their sentence.

This injustice was addressed by adding an article to the third judicial reform package. The sentence given to leftists was applied to those on the right as well, and the two defendants involved in the TİP massacre were also released. That is the entire story. However, what is reflected and discussed in the media is different than the mere application of justice. Actually, there is only one narrative. An objection is raised as to how the violent murderers of seven youngsters were released. The bloody incident in 1978 is brought back to the collective conscience and the release of the murderers is protested. When the issue is considered from this perspective, those who killed the teachers in Adana and the murderers of laborers in Ümraniye shouldn’t have been released.

For days there has been a campaign about this issue in the Turkish media. It is alleged that innocent leftist youngsters were killed by rightist murderers. However, those who brought violence into the ideological clashes as a doctrine in Turkey were “pioneering socialists” following in the footsteps of Che Guevara. They killed thousands of rightist youngsters and escalated violence with the systematic violence they imposed.

It has been 32 years since that time. Parliament resolved an injustice with a law it enacted. However, it appears this injustice is still alive in the minds of those discussing the murders committed 34 years ago. The left wing has been sustaining belief in this injustice vigorously through its superior use of traditional propaganda.