19 February 2020
İstanbul, Çağlayan Courthouse
We would, first of all, like to state that we wholeheartedly welcome the acquittal of all our friends, notably Osman Kavala, at yesterday’s hearing. Individuals have been criminalized and victimized by irrational, unlawful, ungrounded allegations with trumped up charges linking their everyday lives with criminal acts and a great struggle for justice has been undertaken within the scope of this trial, as is the case with the one we will witness shortly. We, however, cannot say that justice is served in the face of a new process brought about by the re-arrest of Osman Kavala.
The prosecutor’s office presented its opinion on 27 November 2019 at the 10th hearing of the case, known as the Büyükada Trial, initiated against 11 human rights defenders about three years ago. The 11th hearing of the trial will commence at the 35th Heavy Penal Court soon at Çağlayan Courthouse. During the course of the Büyükada Trial, which should have never been initiated in the first place, we have witnessed the transfer of evidence presented by defense attorneys and human rights defenders refuting false charges into the case file for more than two years.
During this process the public prosecutor has been replaced five times. We have also witnessed that the public prosecutors did not add any piece of favorable or unfavorable evidence whatsoever in terms of the charges put forth in the indictment to the case file. In addition to the lack of such endeavor, we have also seen that the public prosecutor’s office did not in any way verify the evidence that refuted the charges raised in the indictment and the file in their argument presented on 27 November 2017.
The role of the office of the prosecutor in criminal proceedings is to serve justice and to reveal material truth to this end. The task of the office of the prosecutor, therefore, is not to secure sentencing the defendants by any means. The prosecutor has nevertheless requested that the defendants be sentenced in spite of the fact that all pieces of evidence presented by the prosecutor’s office against the defendants have been refuted and the evidence in favor of the defendants verified that no offense had been committed. The main duty of public prosecutors, indeed, is to contribute to the disclosure of truth.
As has been defined in the “European Guidelines on Ethics and Conduct for Public Prosecutors,” the main duty of the public prosecutor in criminal proceedings is to “have regard to all relevant circumstances of the case including those affecting the suspect irrespective of whether they are to the latter’s advantage or disadvantage.”
This principle underscores the requirement that the duty of the public prosecutor is not to punish individuals no matter what within the scope of criminal proceedings but, on the contrary, to act within a mechanism seeking justice and to contribute to the disclosure of material truth. The duty of the public prosecutor, therefore, is to actually see when evidence to the disadvantage of the defendants were refuted and to evaluate them in a manner so as to reveal material truth.
The level and sufficiency of evidence necessary to initiate criminal proceedings and those necessary for the sentencing of defendants are not the same. Although everything that has been presented as evidence in the indictment for the Büyükada Trial was refuted at the prosecution process, the fact that the office of the public prosecutor presented their argument ignoring all is a blatant disregard of law. Why do we need proceedings if the evidence presented in a case refuting the charges in the indictment will not be taken into account?
The duty of jurists to avoid arbitrary conduct and act in accordance with professional ethics makes its presence felt even more in such cases.
We, hereby, invite the court to rule for the acquittal of all human rights defenders standing trial within the scope of this case by taking into account the manifest and grave shortcomings of the prosecutor’s argument.
Defending human rights in Turkey should no longer be a criminal offense.
Amnesty International, Turkey
Association for Monitoring Equal Rights
Citizen’s Assembly
Human Rights Association
Human Rights Agenda Association
Human Rights Foundation of Turkey
Rights Initiative Association
Women’s Coalition