Courtroom Cram-Full of Supporters for Tried Beşikçi and Şimşek

The capacity of the courtroom was exceeded by the number of supporters for sociologist İsmail Beşikçi and laywer Zeycan Balcı Şimşek in the first hearing of the case under charges of "spreading propaganda for the PKK", the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party.

Before the hearing on Thursday (29 July), members of the Ankara Initiative for Freedom of Thought gathered in front of the Beşiktaş Courthouse on the European side of Istanbul. They posted a banner featuring "İsmail Beşikçi is our conscience, we will not allow to silence our conscience". 250 signatures of a total of more than 2,000 were crammed on the banner.

This was the first hearing of the case against un-detained defendants Beşikçi and Şimşek, who is the editorial manager of the "Contemporary Law and Society" magazine as the publication of the Contemporary Lawyers Association (ÇHD) Istanbul Branch.

The court room was packed...

Beşikçi and Şimşek face prison sentences of up to 7.5 years each on the grounds of an article entitled "The right of nations to self determination and the Kurds". They were represented by more than 20 lawyers, among them also Levent Kanat and Kemal Aytaç.

bianet talked to Sait Çetinoğlu who followed the hearing at the Istanbul 11^th High Criminal Court. He said that the defendants drew attention to breaches of the law which occurred in the course of the opening of the trial. The case was postponed to 12 November.

Publisher Ragıp Zarakolu, Muzaffer Erdoğdu, Aydın Doğan and Ahmet Önal, writers Ümit Fırat and Temel Demirer, Dr Kemal Parlak, the Head of the Board of Directors of Yaşam Radio, İbrahim Gürbüz, human rights defender and musician Şanar Yurdatapan, interpreter Atilla Tuygan, journalist Nevzat Onaran, poet Necmettin Salaz and Necati Abay, spokesman of the Solidarity Platform for Detained Journalists were among the supporters in the courtroom.

Further support was expressed by the Socialist Party, the Research Foundation for Science, Education, Aesthetics, Culture and Arts (BEKSAV), the 78'ers Initiative and the 78'ers Federation, ÇHD, the Collective Problems and Democratic Rights Federation and many other initiatives.

Beşikçi: Turkey cannot be strong without a solution

When Beşikçi was interrogated, he stated that even though Turkey wanted to gain influence in the Caucasus, the Middle East and in the Balkans, the country would not be able to become a solid power without resolving the Kurdish Question. Beşikçi emphasized that the Kurdish question was not the business of the prosecutors but instead an issue to be tackled by academics, journalists and philosophers. "Everybody can talk about it except the prosecutors", he said.

Defendant Şimşek pointed out that aspects of the trial were against the law. He said that the basic aim of the writing subject to the allegations was a contribution to the 'opening process' [initiated by the government] and that there were no armed conflicts at the time the article was published. "The trial was opened when the conjuncture changed", Şimşek put forward.

Resisting against injustice...

The indictment was prepared on 11 May. The Istanbul Public Prosecutor, Hakan Karaali, opened the case on the grounds of the following statement made by Beşikçi: "The Kurds pay the price for a 200-year struggle for freedom and for a free fatherland. [...] Syria, Iran and Turkey govern the Kurds with oppression and cruelty. [...] The states that jointly kept the Kurds under oppression could always unite politics, ideology, military force and diplomatic power against the Kurds. This joint governance did not render law and justice. To the contrary, it very clearly crushed and offended a sense of law and justice. The resistance against this oppression and cruelty appears to be a legitimate right. [...]" (EÖ/VK)