Barış Pehlivan, producer of the program “Oradaydım” (I was there) aired on CNN Türk, and former member of the Parliament Nurettin Yılmaz, who had told the torture he had experienced in the foregoing program, were acquitted of the charge of “provoking people to hatred and hostility.” 

Pehlivan and Yılmaz were on trial at the 21st Criminal Court of First Instance of Bakırköy, Istanbul for violating article 216 of the Penal Code (TCK) and were facing prison sentence of 4.5 years. 

“I had to tell the torture as a critique” 

Eight months after the program was aired on July 24, 2007, prosecutor Ali Çakır demanded the prosecution of the two individuals in the indictment sent to the Bakırköy Chief Prosecutor’s Office. 

According to daily Radikal, Yılmaz said, “I went to prison for various reasons between December 17, 980 and 1984. The incident I described in the indictment was applied to me between 1983 and 1984. I had to tell this as a critique. I had no reason other than criticizing what happened to me. 

The conversation between the judge and the lawyer 

There were interesting dialogs between head of the court Judge Yunus Dertli and the lawyers. When lawyer Mehmet Talat Seyhan said, “Diyarbakır will be remembered as a dark spot in the history of law”, judge’s reply was “A good system was not established in prison and cannot be. It is the same in the USA and France.” 

When Seyhan stated most of the people tortured were of Kurdish ethnicity, judge’s reply was “Do not base it on the issue of ethnicity. This is a class matter rather than of ethnicity. (EÖ/TB)