{"id":26086,"date":"2023-08-29T09:55:40","date_gmt":"2023-08-29T09:55:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=26086"},"modified":"2023-08-29T10:06:11","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T10:06:11","slug":"life-imprisonment-from-the-age-of-14-a-turkish-show-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2023\/08\/29\/life-imprisonment-from-the-age-of-14-a-turkish-show-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"Life imprisonment from the age of 14 – a Turkish show trial"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following article, written by Sarah Glynn, was first posted by bella caledonia<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

LIFE IMPRISONMENT FROM THE AGE OF 14 – A TURKISH SHOW TRIAL<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nobody seriously doubts Mazlum \u0130\u00e7li\u2019s innocence. He was 140 km away when the murders took place, as has been proved through many different forms of evidence. But the state needed a culprit, and \u0130\u00e7li is a Kurd from a political family. That was enough to see him locked away for life. When he was detained, he was only 14. Now 23, he has spent 40% of his life behind bars. Last week Turkey\u2019s highest court confirmed the verdict.<\/p>\n

\u0130\u00e7li\u2019s case is intensely political and intimately linked to the Koban\u00ea Case that is intended to destroy the Peoples\u2019 Democratic Party (HDP) and the future of the Kurdish Leftist opposition. In October 2014, when ISIS was besieging the predominantly Kurdish city of Koban\u00ea in Syria, Kurds across the world were crying out for Koban\u00ea to be given support. Black ISIS flags could be seen from the Turkish border, but not only was Turkey doing nothing to help; having eased the passage of people going to join ISIS, they were stopping those who wanted to go and fight for Koban\u00ea\u2019s defence. The HDP put out a tweet calling for people to come out into the streets in protest. The huge demonstrations were met by armed security forces and violent counter-protestors \u2013 including many members of H\u00fcda Par, a far-right Kurdish Islamist organisation whose antecedents were responsible for hundreds of murders in the 1990s. In the ensuing struggle, official reports record 37 deaths and the actual figure was probably around fifty. The majority of those who died were supporters of the HDP, but in Diyarbakir four H\u00fcda Par members were also killed, including 16-year-old Yasin B\u00f6r\u00fc. On the basis of their tweet, HDP members stand accused of all these murders, as well as of the usual crime of disrupting the unity and territorial integrity of the state. 108 people are on trial, of whom 36 could face life imprisonment without parole. And the Koban\u00ea case also feeds into the HDP closure case, which could see the party shut down and 451 people banned from party politics for five years. Murders need an immediate culprit, and that is where \u0130\u00e7li comes it. He has been found guilty of taking part in the H\u00fcda Par murders, including the murder of Yasin B\u00f6r\u00fc, who is potrayed as the official martyr of the protests.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Mazlum \u0130\u00e7li before and after his imprisonment<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u0130\u00e7li\u2019s father,\u00a0Sidar<\/a>, was active in Kurdish politics, for which he had twice spent time in prison, and \u0130\u00e7li had already experienced the irrational vengeance of the state as they sought to use him to punish his father. When he was just eleven, he was detained along with his thirteen-year-old brother. Both were found guilty of planning a bombing, but all they were carrying was fireworks. On that occasion, \u0130\u00e7li was punished with a fine, and spent just five days in pretrial detention, but that was enough for him to be tortured, and his brother was detained for a year and a half.<\/p>\n

\u0130\u00e7li\u2019s prosecution is based on the statement of an anonymous witness who selected his picture from a collection of images of people with police records. The \u2018witness\u2019 subsequently denied his identification in court, but that was not allowed to make a difference. Discrediting the witness would not only have damaged \u0130\u00e7li\u2019s case, but would also have raised questions over 14-15 other convictions in which the same witness had been involved.<\/p>\n

\u0130\u00e7li was detained two months after the demonstrations and murders. When he was taken, he was tortured in front of his father, and the next day his appendix burst and he had to have an emergency operation. Claiming \u2018security reasons\u2019 the state moved the case to Ankara, 900 km from \u0130\u00e7li\u2019s home in Diyarbakir. He spent the next one and a half years in solitary confinement, and his family were only able to visit him twice during that time. Then he was sent even further away to Silivri prison outside Istanbul. Removing political prisoners far from their families is a common Turkish practice.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Right from the beginning, \u0130\u00e7li made clear that at the time of the murders he was playing drums in his father\u2019s band at a wedding in a village far from Diyarbakir. But the court\u00a0did not want to hear<\/a>. They did not look at the evidence of his mobile phone usage in the village. Instead, they commissioned a report on footage from the attack on H\u00fcda Par, which claimed one of the attackers could \u201clikely\u201d be \u0130\u00e7li. And in 2017 he was found guilty.<\/p>\n

Following the initial conviction, a new lawyer amassed more evidence proving \u0130\u00e7li\u2019s presence at the wedding, including video footage and statements from the groom and from the taxi driver who drove him there and back. Briefly, it seemed that the nightmare might be about to end. In May 2021, the prosecutor called for an acquittal, but when, a month later, the court ordered a stay of execution, the same prosecutor objected, and the decision was revoked the same day. The state even brought in\u00a0another secret witness<\/a>\u00a0who is notorious for having provided \u2018witness\u2019 statements in over 150 trials. For \u0130\u00e7li\u2019s lawyer, and anyone else following what has happened, this is a clear case of interference from above, which has now been extended to the highest court.<\/p>\n

The lack of any judicial independence is blatant, but everyone knows that these political trials are a charade. They don\u2019t have to be convincing, just to provide some plausible deniability for dictatorial powers. The Koban\u00ea case itself has been riven with contradictions and illegalities, and the European Court of Human Rights has already demolished its main argument \u2013 based on the HDP tweet \u2013 in their\u00a0ruling<\/a>\u00a0on the illegal detention of Selahattin Demirta\u015f, former co-chair of the HDP and one of the defendants.<\/p>\n

For \u0130\u00e7li and his family the harassment does not stop here. After the first trial, his father, Sidar, became a target for H\u00fcda Par thugs. After an attack on his office, he found 98 bullets. Luckily, he wasn\u2019t there. His businesses were attacked and set on fire, and when he tried to extinguish the flames, he was stopped by the police. Besides being imprisoned twice in the 1990s, Sidar is included in the ongoing KCK case in which hundreds of people have been accused of links to the PKK. After a further conviction \u2013 for sharing social media posts \u2013 his lawyer advised him to leave Turkey. Reluctant to go, despite the risks, Sidar spoke with his son in prison, who told him: They will always bother you. Go to Rojava or Europe and continue the struggle. Sidar took his son\u2019s advice and is now one of the most active members of the Strasbourg Kurdish community, where no event is complete without his songs. But he told me that he would swap a year in Europe for a day in Diyarbakir.<\/p>\n

Back in Turkey the Human Rights Association (\u0130HD) have\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that they will be launching a campaign for \u0130\u00e7li. Their co-chair, Erin Keskin, commented, \u2018The sentence given to Mazlum is actually a summary of all unlawful decisions, so everyone who wants peace, democracy and a solution should protect Mazlum \u0130\u00e7li.\u2019<\/p>\n

24.8.23<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

___________<\/p>\n

also see:<\/p>\n

Earthquake in Turkey \u2013 the state versus the people – Sarah Glynn, bella caledonia<\/a><\/p>\n

Ch\u00e8re Marianne do you know why the Kurds are angry? – Sarah Glynn, bella caledonia<\/a><\/p>\n

Turkey and chemical weapons: the accusation no one wants to investigate – Sarah Glynn, bella caledonia<\/a><\/p>\n

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The following article, written by Sarah Glynn, was first posted by bella caledonia. LIFE IMPRISONMENT FROM THE AGE OF 14 – A TURKISH SHOW TRIAL Nobody seriously doubts Mazlum \u0130\u00e7li\u2019s innocence. He was 140 km away when the murders took place, as has been proved through many different forms of evidence. But the state needed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1858,1867,1846,1845,1868,1847,1848,18,1870],"tags":[8025],"class_list":["post-26086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oppression-liberation","category-emancipation-liberation-and-self-determination","category-british-imperialism","category-us-imperialism","category-against-imperialism","category-the-eu","category-ex-ussr","category-political-campaigns","category-middle-east-and-north-africa","tag-author-sarah-glynn"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/mastodon.scot\/@rcfscotland\/110972301771765496","error":""},"views":1120,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26086"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26094,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26086\/revisions\/26094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}