Erdogan, result of Turkey's EU involvement

Prisoners, then released without explanation. Abnegation rights in Turkey are a European issue

The past days of justice in Turkey has been protagonist, again of the public debate there. Asli Erdoğan, writer and journalist arrested after the August 2016 coup, on charges of «terrorist propaganda», «participation in a terrorist organisation» and «inciting riots», writes: «Besoman, it is not easy to be a writer and journalist in modern Turkey. [...] If I was French, would I have been treated like this? I don't think that's also the fault of us Turks: the problem is that literature, here, doesn't matter».

Turkey has been talked about because of two different news reports among them, which deal with inexplicable arrests, preventable detentions, inhumane sentences and releases as unmotivated as unmotivated. In Turkey the right is uncertain, intellectuals and journalists do not know why they are arrested and do not even know why they are released. Deniz Yucel, correspondent of the German daily Die Welt, was arrested a year ago and held more than 365 days in preventative arrest without any charges being formalised. His release came after pressure from Germany. Deniz Yucell, when he was released, said the same words that Asli Erdoğan had said at the time of his release: «I don't know why I was arrested. And I don't know why I got rid of».

Adding to this is the suspicion that few need to feel guilty, of deals played on the backs of foreign prisoners who have done nothing but their own work. An interview with a political rival of Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdoğan could cost you arrest and condemnation.

At this moment, as a consequence of the coup failed, over 50,000 were detained in Turkey, arrested on charges of coupging or participating in a terrorist organisation of the guerrilla or Kurdish matrix and over 100,000 people have lost their jobs.

At this point in Turkey, foreign journalists after many talks are released; while Turkish journalists, for whom no foreign pressure can be exerted, are sentenced to life in prison under very serious prison terms.

Brothers Ahmet and Mehmet Altan, journalist Nazli Ilicak, Fevzi Yazici, Yakup Simsek and Sukru Tugrul Ozsenski, are accused of attempting to revis the constitutional order» and for that they have been sentenced to life in prison. With this sentence, if anyone still had any doubts, the Turkish state has permanently buried itself.

The anticipated sentence is the highest, demanded by the prosecution: severe imprisonment, for six intellectuals, means 23 hours of isolation a day and the opportunity to accept visits once every 15 days. A torture and a warning at the same time; not only a warning to Turkish citizens but also to Europeans, journalists, writers and intellectuals, that we should know exactly who we are dealing with every time we want to deal with Turkey. How could we not remember Marco Pannella's prophetic words, which he used to repeat the vital importance of entering the European Union of Israel and Turkey. Pannella, a refined intellectual, referred to the European roots of the state of Israel and at the same time to the importance that Byzantium has had in the culture and political balances of states that today belong to the European Union. We are paying a guilty disobedience; we are paying it, while prison colleagues in Turkey are blabbered victims, lack of vision and pragmatism. All that we are living by ourselves was written, but the special interests and inability to include have made Europe's eastern borders a clock bomb.

And speaking of prison, the thought, as it's natural to happen, goes to our prison system that, to respect the wonderful Constitution that many speak of, but few are the ones who want to apply it, there's a need for reforms that Rita Bernardini and almost 10 thousand inmates have put into action a great satigrea, a hunger strike, a true example of civil protest, a lecture for all of us who are outside, a lecture from the one who has erred and for this, in addition to losing our freedom, in prisons, is losing dignity.

/Married by Léspresso

Translation: Express Journal

Editor and title: Periscope