Human Rights Violations caused by the investigations launched under the name of “restructu-ring” in the process that turned into a modern genocide for the volunteers of the Hizmet Movement in the aftermath of the July 15, 2016 coup attempt in Turkey
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report examines the systematic lynching and genocide that the Erdoğan regime, which rapidly became authoritarian in 2011 and especially after the July 15, 2016 coup attempt, opened 285 new prisons with a total capacity of 196,682 in addition to the existing prisons in Turkey after 2016, increasing the total number of prisons to 403 and the capacity of prisons to 295,328 people and imprisoning its political opponents in these prisons, imposed on every layer of the volunteer community of the Hizmet movement through the investigations opened under the name of “Restructuring” by the Judicial Organs under the control of the Erdoğan regime.
· As it is known, with the great massacre movement initiated based on the story of the infamous coup attempt in Turkey on the night of July 15, 2016, which wassystematically prevented from being illuminated at every stage by the current government and its supporters, and which has been shrouded in so many smokescreens since the first day , the community known as the volunteers of the service movement, led by Fethullah Gülen, was rolled over like a steamroller, regardless of whether they were men and women, young and old, children and patients, students, civilians or officials. As of April 2018, 160,000 people have been detained, 50,000 people have been arrested on charges of FETÖ/PDY membership and 152,000 public employees have been dismissed from their jobs during the purge that began on July 15, 2016, unprecedented in the world.
· As it is known, Erdoğan and his government, which has become increasingly corrupt, increasingly distanced itself from the law, transformed and authoritarianized the judiciary by making it dependent on itself since 2002 when it came to power, had a historic opportunity with the July 15, 2016 coup attempt and used this opportunity to transform and produce enmity against the Hizmet movement and gained uncontrolled political power and authority. In short, Erdoğan has established his regime. For the establishment of this regime, the July 15 incident and the hostility against the Hizmet movement were constantly made an agenda, the existing Constitutional regulations were ignored and a de facto one-man regime was introduced without even a new Constitutional regulation, the parliamentary system was abolished (later on, this one-man regime was formalized by calling it the Presidential System with the April 16, 2017 Referendum) and all institutions and organizations of the state were redesigned according to the one-man system, that is, the Erdoğan Regime. In order to ensure the legitimacy and continuity of this new regime, to turn the society into a single front on its side and to intimidate all opposition groups, it has marched on the Hizmet movement by using all the power of the state and especially the Judiciary.
· In this process, tens of thousands of violations of rights, some of which have been brought to the ECHR, have been created by the judiciary, which has been turned into a cudgel of the government and an instrument of liquidation. In these cases pending before the European Court of Human Rights, judgments of violation of rights have started to be issued and it is understood that similar judgments will increase like an avalanche.
· However, despite the ECHR’s rulings on rights violations, the new regime established in Turkey has, by its very nature, begun to show a reflex to refuse to recognize, implement and resist, at all costs, the status and decisions that the country has accepted through international agreements, and has begun to traditionalize this attitude.
· Even though the majority of the media was turned into supporters of the established regime, the intellectuals and opposition parties were silenced, and the July 15 coup d’état was, according to their own rhetoric, “a great blessing fromGod “, the contradictions were gradually revealed, and according to some of the news sources accessible to the public, “the truth of the matter was not at all as described“, At the very moment when the official mouthpieces and rhetoric began to lose credibility, the former regime, in a manner reminiscent of Goebbels tactics, with unparalleled media support, again turned on the service movement and its volunteers and launched a second wave of unlawfulness.
This wave is called “restructuring“. Through this accusation, the Hizmet Movement and its volunteers have again been made a daily agenda with mind-boggling accusations, and thousands of news reports served to local and national media have tried to shape public perception and maintain the existing illusion.
2. THE EXTENT OF THE 2ND WAVE OF UNLAWFUL “RESTRUCTURING” INVESTIGATIONS AGAINST VOLUNTEERS OF THE HIZMET MOVEMENT
In the “restructuring” investigations initiated on the direct instructions of the Erdoğan regime to the judiciary, a “witch hunt” has been launched in almost all provinces of Turkey and thousands of people have been detained, arrested and sentenced in hundreds of investigations, some of them in hasty trials, and many people continue to be held in prison as detainees or convicts. In this way, thousands of people have been subjected to endless criminal accusations, their social, family and professional honor and reputation have been damaged, they have been subjected to prejudicial behavior of the society and have been forced to isolate themselves from the society and have been turned into living corpses.
· If one wants to clearly understand what the dimensions of the situation are in concrete terms, the gravity of the situation can be revealed with all its nakedness even by analyzing thousands of news reports and their contents that appear on the screen when a search is made on the internet with the title “fetö restructuring“.
In order to understand the situation, some examples of web search results are quoted below. In the examples, it is understood that people from all segments and regions of society, such as students, women, couriers, businessmen-craftsmen, civil servants, civilians, old-young people, people who have been sentenced before and released, people who listen to religious conversations by joining chat rooms in x, people from different provinces, have been detained, arrested and sentenced as suspects in “restructuring” investigations.
Below, the originals of the news headlines that appear on the search screen when a web search is made are given in .pdf format, the headlines of the news are presented in word text translation just below the .pdfs, and the links to the news are footnoted.
For example ;
The climate of fear and oppression prevailing in the country is reinforced through this and similar news on television, print media and social media every day. The media, which is under the control of the authoritarian and oppressive government, intensively serves news about the “restructuring” investigations to the media, showing the people subjected to the operation being dragged to the courthouses or security directorates in handcuffs, lined up in single file, showing what the political power does to those whom it considers enemies, and thus, the fear that has settled in the country is further exacerbated.
3. RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN “RESTRUCTURING” INVESTIGATIONS
The “restructuring” investigations initiated at the behest of the political power in Turkey, which has become overly authoritarian and whose checks and balances have been abolished, are unlawful according to the established case law of the Court of Cassation and the decisions of the Constitutional Court. Because in the investigations and operations carried out under the name of “restructuring“, market warehouses are raided, oils, rice, pasta and money are confiscated as “evidence of crime“, in-kind and in-cash aid is provided to victims whose spouses are in detention, and the gathering of a few people, even from the same profession, is illegal, Unimaginable actions such as organizing meals and days out, attending each other’s weddings and funerals, giving pocket money or supplementary education to children whose parents have been imprisoned, and meeting their needs can be considered “acts of terrorism“.
· The July 15, 2016 coup attempt has been a complete mystery from the very first moment. For those who are looking for the answer to the question: “If you want to find the criminal, first investigate who the crime serves!” (Alexandre Dumas) or “Whoever the crime serves is the criminal.” (Cicero).
In this context;
· According to the decision of the 2nd Chamber of the Military Court of Appeals No. 07.05.1980 T., 1980/157 E., 1980/169 K., the “intended act” must be an act aimed at achieving the goal of the armed terrorist organization and must be capable of producing the result and must be of the nature/severity of grave acts such as killing, wounding, bombing. However, none of the acts subject to these investigations can be considered to have this quality. It is a fact that none of the acts charged within the scope of the “restructuring” investigations can be considered as acts of grave quality and intensity towards the organizational order and purpose, as they do not involve force / violence, threat and grave danger.
· “According to the decision of the Criminal General Assembly of the Court of Cassation numbered 01.02.1988 T., 1988/9-422 E., 1998/1 K., it is not possible to accept that the crime has occurred with theacceptance that the persons suspected in the “restructuring” investigationsknow that they are members of the organization or that itis legally determined without hesitation that they are in the organization.
· According to the decision of the Criminal General Assembly of the Court of Cassation No. 30.04.2002 T., 2002/9-102 E., 2002/236 K., it is not possible to use and accept the actions subject to “restructuring” investigations as evidence of a crime, considering that they are legitimate actions that are not crimes to be committed, or that they are actions performed for individuals who are not involved in crime with humanitarian feelings, or that they are not related to a situation that can be attributed to crime.
For all these reasons, the restructuring investigations and prosecutions initiated under the compulsion of the current government violate the “Right not to be defamed and the Presumption of Innocence” and thus the “Right to a Fair Trial” enshrined in Article 38, Paragraph 4 of the 1982 Constitution of the Republic of Turkey and Article 6, Paragraph 2 of the ECHR. They violate the “Right to Immunity from Defamation and the Presumption of Innocence” and therefore the “Right to a Fair Trial” and the ” Principleof Legal Certainty / Certainty” in both the Constitution and the ECHR, and with the unlawfulness inherent in the“restructuring” investigations, they also constitute a violation of international conventions and statutes that Turkey has ratified.
4. CONCLUSION
In the second phase of the process that started on July 15, 2016, criminal investigations are being systematically opened against volunteers and sympathizers of the service movement under the name of “Restructuring“, a concept and crime that was invented again, this time with the accusations of “Being a Member of an Armed Terrorist Organization” or “Aiding an Armed Terrorist Organization“, “Violation of the Law on the Prevention of Terrorism Financing“.
These investigations threaten thousands of citizens, who were previously subjected to criminal investigations under Article 314 of the Turkish Penal Code on similar charges, but were ruled “No Case to Prosecute” or were given “Acquittal” verdicts by the High Criminal Courts as a result of the prosecutions against them, or who were unjustly convicted in previous prosecutions against them and whose convictions were “Executed” by keeping them in closed prisons for years, with a clear attitude of lawlessness and rulelessness.
“Reconstruction” investigations and prosecutions have now turned into a systematic and callous apparatus of genocide, to the extent of destroying the material and moral existence of the person, disregarding human dignity. It has become impossible for people who have been subjected to all these intense and severe traumas to lead a self-contained, non-interventionist and secure life in terms of social life.
It is seen that by serving the news of this investigation, which was initiated with the instructions of the political power in a way that constitutes an open intervention in the judiciary, to the media day by day, social tension and the control of the members of the judiciary are tried to be ensured and it is almost as if the priority agenda is not to let the people belonging to the service movement breathe, that the sharp eyes of the government are on the judicial organization, that it is dangerous for anyone to develop an impartial or other opinion than the political power on this issue, and that an adverse consensus is tried to be created and maintained in all civil and official circles of the society against the members of the service movement, who have been targeted in this regard. It is understood that they have sacrificed and will sacrifice the law once again and again and again in order to make society stop distinguishing between good and evil in the mind and conscience of society and to make the dominance of only the means that will achieve the political goal superior and to ensure the continuation of the marginalization moves that the political power feeds on and to perpetuate their power with this method.
Under all these circumstances, any possible reflex and initiative of the members of the judiciary (which essentially has no independence and assurance of the judiciary) and the police, which are directly affiliated with the political power, to act objectively and in accordance with justice, has been conceptualized under the name of “Restructuring” and shaped into criminal accusations, and the social structure and members of the service movement are tried to be shaken, and the “presumption of innocence” is tried to be paralyzed and reset with these artificial strokes.
In this way, a modern and new generation massacre, organized and institutional evil, almost a modern Holocaust, is being tried to be revived and legitimized, this situation is being shoved into the eyes like similar ones in the past, the investigations are being redesigned in order to destroy the public conscience and sense of justice, to numb the masses and to make people thankful that nothing has happened to them yet…
Therefore, it has become undeniable that a community of tens of thousands of adherents, which is an extremely peaceful and authentic movement of volunteerism and kindness, has been forced to migrate from their countries or isolated from the society from which it emerged through endless pressures.
5. RECOMMENDATIONS
In the face of these systematic and unprecedented attacks on personal liberty and freedom, the main recommendations to the Turkish authorities include
· Immediately put an end to the “restructuring” investigations and similar ones against members of the Hizmet movement,
· To take all legislative, administrative and practical measures and establish control systems, to ensure the full independence of the judiciary and the security of judges as part of the attack on individual rights and freedoms in the country through “restructuring” investigations,
The main recommendations to the international community are:
1. Strongly call on the Turkish Authorities to immediately put an end to the rights violations caused by the “restructuring” investigations,
2. In accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, the Human Rights Council established an independent commission to investigate the issue and to prepare a report with findings on human rights violations,
3. Imposing sanctions based on the Human Rights Commission report, similar to the political and diplomatic pressure and sanctions imposed on Turkey by the Committee of Ministers based on unimplemented ECtHR judgments.
HUKUKİ DESTEK- WhatsApp