Giving his defense testimony yesterday to the judges of the İstanbul 13th Higher Criminal Court, which is hearing the Ergenekon trial, Balbay said the indictment was riddled with inconsistencies. He said, “I deny all accusations. I haven’t incited people to revolt unarmed, let alone inciting them to armed revolt.”
Stating that he is a secular democratic journalist, Balbay claimed that the prosecutors had failed to find anything linking him to any terrorist organizations in the over 5,000 essays and 23 books he has written. He also accused the prosecution of holding back documents that the prosecution used as evidence in the indictment against him.
Balbay also said that journal entries allegedly kept by him had been modified, claiming the entries were not written in the order in which they were listed in the indictment. He said the media was acting as a court. “The indictment is, in a sense, an execution warrant,” he said. Using Turkish wordplay, he said, “If I say this courtroom is too narrow [which sounds like the Turkish word for ‘coup’], they will say, ‘Oh, here he said it, he wants a coup’.” He said he was going to present his defense statements in two parts; one focusing on the legal aspect and the other one focusing on the specifics of his profession. “A journalist is the witness of the age he lives in. The prosecutors want to turn me into a suspect of the age. These notes [entries] are the professional bedroom of a journalist. They never have any value as documents. They have been kept by the journalist to allow him to recollect things. These entries in no way are qualified to be evidence in a trial. They have been clipped and tweezed out and put together in a special way. There is nothing I cannot account for as a journalist,” Balbay said. He also accused the prosecution of smearing Cumhuriyet as the headquarters of a terror organization in the indictment. “In the indictment, Cumhuriyet is a terrorist base and İlhan Selçuk and Balbay are its chiefs. My contacts with 10th President Ahmet Necdet Sezer are included in the indictment. There is no evidence to prove that I have ever relayed Sezer’s messages to [Ergenekon] suspects. The indictment implies that the Presidency was in control of a terrorist organization. I have had 11 meetings with Sezer. The president occupies the highest rank in the state. If he is to send a message to an agency, he can do so without using an intermediary. Meeting with the president is the power of a journalist. I would not think in a million years that this would be counted a crime.”
Benzer Haberler 
National
