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The fact that no light has yet been shed on a controversial military plot that aims to discredit the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the Gülen movement, despite it having been published a week ago, has raised suspicions over whether the military judiciary, which undertook the responsibility of carrying out the investigation, was trying to cover up the incident.
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The existence of two judicial systems, one civilian and one military, has been the subject of a long-lasting debate in Turkey, with many finding this judicial duality running counter to the principles of a democratic state where there is the rule of law. In the case of the military plot, which was devised by a colonel, many said it was wrong for the incident to be investigated by the military judiciary because the document includes civilian crimes against a political party, the government. Now that the investigation process is taking so much time, one inevitably loses hopes about a full disclosure being made because the military judiciary is far from neutral. Bugün's Adem Yavuz Arslan says the fact that Col. Dursun Çiçek, who devised the military plot, will testify to military instead of civilian prosecutors, increases the number of question marks in everyone's minds about whether there is an effort to cover up the incident. In his view, the breaking point of the investigation is Çiçek's referral to military prosecutors instead of civilian ones. “If Çiçek had testified to civilian prosecutors, he would have given a sample of his signature and this would have helped reveal whether the signature under the controversial plot belongs to him or not,” says Arslan who is not hopeful about the military investigation bearing any results. Yeni Şafak's Mehmet Şeker dwells on the shortcomings of the dual judicial system and the need to have a single system in which no members of a professional group are subject to different laws. Questioning the obstacles preventing the establishment of a single judicial system in Turkey similar to those in other countries, he asks whether this could be because the members of the military have weapons. “The police also have weapons, why are the police not tried in police courts? The same idea can be applied for other professional groups, and different judicial systems can be applied to doctors, engineers, etc. Every professional group could demand their own judiciary,” says Şeker, noting that if there are two judicial systems in a country, this could be more than two as well. According to Star's Mehmet Altan, Turkey's military does not have confidence in Turkey's judicial system because if it had confidence in the law, the military courts, which do not comply with universal law, would not exist in Turkey. “There are not many military courts in the world. And in the countries where there are military courts, these courts only deal with disciplinary crimes. But in Turkey, there is a huge judicial military system,” says Altan. In his view the reason for the existence of such a system in Turkey is to ensure that the illegal acts of military members go unpunished. “Why have we been discussing a military action plan uncovered by the Taraf daily for a week? The military has so far failed to punish those who have been involved in such conspiracies just because those cases were seen by military courts. If the civilian courts had dealt with them, then the results would not have been the same,” contends Altan.
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| 20 June 2009, Saturday |
| FATMA DİŞLİ ZIBAK |
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