Real motives of Feb. 28 coup investigation

In an effort to seek justice for the perpetrators of coups staged in Turkey, a dozen military officers were detained last week as part of an investigation into the unarmed military intervention of 1997. The investigation is supported by many. However, there has also been criticism of the investigation, mostly by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), claiming that the driving force behind it is revenge.

Bugün’s Gültekin Avcı likens the claims that the government is acting out of revenge to “covering justice with a cloth of vengefulness” and says that these debates overshadow the significance of the investigation. Avcı says those who label the investigation into the Feb. 28 coup, specifically CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, as vengeful should answer these questions: Is it revenge or retaliation for someone to seek justice for the tyranny and despotism he was subjected to? Is not seeking justice and punishing criminals the function of the justice system? Is Egypt’s toppled President Hosni Mubarak currently being tried out of revenge, too? Is Kılıçdaroğlu, who has filed a complaint against writer Süleyman Yeşilyurt for insulting comments about him in one of his books, also taking revenge on Yeşilyurt, or is he seeking justice? The role of prosecutors and judges is to punish criminals so that the victims do not have to take the law into their own hands. If you call this taking revenge and make light of a person claiming their rights, this means you are rejecting the rule of law.

Radikal’s Oral Çalışlar also emphasizes that the investigation is solely an act of settling accounts with those who have significantly harmed Turkey’s political development; but on the other hand, the argument that the media arm of the Feb. 28 coup should also be investigated does indeed have a vengeful tone. Yet, he notes, in order to prove this investigation’s aim is right and justified, members of the judiciary should have extraordinary sensitivity and care to ensure the judicial process is compatible with the universal principles of law and human rights. Çalışlar specifically underlines that the judiciary should abandon the mentality of “Detain first, try later.”

“Defending the rights of the people who were subjected to injustice cannot be called revenge anywhere in the world, and the intentions of those people calling it revenge are suspect in every part of the world,” says Yeni Şafak’s Özlem Albayrak.

2012-04-17