LAWYER CALLS TURKISH CHRISTIANS’ TRIAL A ‘SCANDAL’
Barbara G. Baker
Crosswalk.com
/religiontoday/11610031/
Oct 20 2009
SILIVRI, Turkey (CDN) — After three prosecution witnesses testified
yesterday that they didn’t even know two Christians on trial for
"insulting Turkishness and Islam," a defense lawyer called the trial a
"scandal."
Speaking after yesterday’s hearing in the drawn-out trial, defense
attorney Haydar Polat said the case’s initial acceptance by a
state prosecutor in northwestern Turkey was based only on a written
accusation from the local gendarmerie headquarters unaccompanied by
any documentation.
"It’s a scandal," Polat said. "It was a plot, a planned one, but a
very unsuccessful plot, as there is no evidence."
Turkish Christians Hakan Tastan and Turan Topal were arrested in
October 2006; after a two-day investigation they were charged with
allegedly slandering Turkishness and Islam while talking about
their faith with three young men in Silivri, an hour’s drive west
of Istanbul.
Even the three prosecution witnesses who appeared to testify at
Thursday’s (Oct. 15) hearing failed to produce any evidence whatsoever
against Tastan and Topal, who could be jailed for up to two years if
convicted on three separate charges.
Yesterday’s three witnesses, all employed as office personnel for
various court departments in Istanbul, testified that they had never
met or heard of the two Christians on trial. The two court employees
who had requested New Testaments testified that they had initiated
the request themselves.
The first witness, a bailiff in a Petty Offenses Court in Istanbul
for the past 28 years, declared he did not know the defendants or
anyone else in the courtroom.
But he admitted that he had responded to a newspaper ad about 10 years
ago to request a free New Testament. After telephoning the number to
give his address, he said, the book arrived in the mail and is still
in his home.
He also said he had never heard of the church mentioned in the
indictment, although he had once gone to a wedding in a church in
Istanbul’s Balikpazari district, where a large Armenian Orthodox
church is located.
"This is the extent of what I know about this subject," he concluded.
Fidgeting nervously, a second witness stated, "I am not at
all acquainted with the defendants, nor do I know any of these
participants. I was not a witness to any one of the matters in the
indictment. I just go back and forth to my work at the Istanbul State
Prosecutors’ office."
The third person to testify reiterated that he also had no acquaintance
with the defendants or anyone in the courtroom. But he stated under
questioning that he had entered a website on the Internet some five
or six years ago that offered a free New Testament.
"I don’t know or remember the website’s name or contents," the witness
said, "but after checking the box I was asked for some of my identity
details, birth date, job, cell phone – I don’t remember exactly what."
Noting that many shops and markets asked for the same kind of
information, the witness said, "I don’t see any harm in that,"
adding that he would not be an open person if he tried to hide all
his personal details.
For the next hearing set for Jan. 28, 2010, the court has repeated
its summons to three more prosecution witnesses who failed to appear
yesterday: a woman employed in Istanbul’s security police headquarters
and two armed forces personnel whose whereabouts had not yet been
confirmed by the population bureau.
Case ‘Demands Acquittal’ Polat said after the hearing that even though
the Justice Ministry gave permission in February for the case to
continue under Turkey’s controversial Article 301, a loosely-defined
law that criminalizes insulting the Turkish nation, "in my opinion
the documents gathered in the file demand an acquittal."
"There is no information, no document, no details, nothing," Polat
said. "There is just a video, showing the named people together, but
what they are saying cannot be heard. It was shot in an open area, not
a secret place, and there is no indication it was under any pressure."
But prosecution lawyer Murat Inan told Compass, "Of course there is
evidence. That’s why the Justice Ministry continued the case. This is
a large ‘orgut’ [a term connoting an illegal and armed organization],
and they need to be stopped from doing this propaganda here."
At the close of the hearing, Inan told the court that there were
missing issues concerning the judicial legality and activities of the
"Bible research center" linked with the defendants that needed to be
examined and exposed.
Turkish press were conspicuously absent at yesterday’s hearing, and
except for one representative of the Turkish Protestant churches,
there were no observers present.
The first seven hearings in the trial had been mobbed by dozens of
TV and print journalists, focused on ultranationalist lawyer Kemal
Kerincsiz, who led a seven-member legal team for the prosecution.
But since the January 2008 jailing of Kerincsiz and Sevgi Erenerol,
who had accompanied him to all the Silivri trials, Turkish media
interest in the case has dwindled. The two are alleged co-conspirators
in the massive Ergenekon cabal accused of planning to overthrow the
Turkish government.
This week the European Commission’s new "Turkey 2009 Progress Report"
spelled out concerns about the problems of Turkey’s non-Muslim
communities.
"Missionaries are widely perceived as a threat to the integrity of
the country and to the Muslim religion," the Oct. 14 report stated.
"Further efforts are needed to create an environment conducive to
full respect of freedom of religion in particular."
In specific reference to Tastan and Topal’s case, the report noted:
"A court case against two missionaries in Silivri continued; it
was also expanded after the Ministry of Justice allowed judicial
proceedings under Article 301 of the Criminal Code."
The Turkish constitution guarantees freedom of religion to all its
citizens, and the nation’s legal codes specifically protect missionary
activities.
"I trust our laws on this. But psychologically, our judges and
prosecutors are not ready to implement this yet," Polat said. "They
look at Christian missionaries from their own viewpoint; they aren’t
able to look at them in a balanced way."