After the Balyoz case was concluded (September 2012), I penned a seven-piece “Balyoz case judgments” series and reserved the final piece for statements by Mehmet Selim Yavuz, the son and defense lawyer of retired general Ahmet Yavuz, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison in the case.
These remarks by Selim Yavuz were particularly interesting: “I have been together with these 364 men [the Balyoz suspects] for three years, day and night. I have witnessed their conversations. I listened to them with objectivity. I listened carefully in search of any flaw in their statements. All have been saying the same thing for three years: that Balyoz is a lie and we have been picked as victims. You cannot possibly make all these 364 people who do not know each other tell the same lie for three consecutive years.”
The day I published these statements by Selim Yavuz (Oct. 30, 2012), I received an email message from a reader of mine.
My reader, who notes that his deceased father-in-law was one of the military servicemen involved in the March 9, 1971 “leftist” coup attempt and then acquitted in the relevant trials, addressed a letter to Selim Yavuz, asking me to forward this letter to him.
I forwarded the letter to Selim Yavuz and I closed this chapter, observing the condition made by my reader to keep the names confidential.
However, when I observed the role played by the “families” as part of propaganda activities, saying that the Balyoz case was based on “fabricated documents” and expressing belief in the absolute innocence of the suspects in the case, I sent a message to this reader and told him that with his permission, I would like to publish his letter to Selim Yavuz.
Upon receiving permission from my reader, whose name I am keeping confidential, I publish his letter, which I dedicate to Dani Rodrik, the son-in-law of chief suspect Çetin Doğan in the Balyoz investigation.
Dear Mehmet Selim,
When I got engaged to my wife, my father-in-law [an omitted part consists of detailed information on the identity of my reader and his father-in-law—A.G.] was in jail in connection with the Madanoğlu case. He was facing the death penalty. As you know, General [Cemal] Madanoğlu and his friends were charged with attempting a coup on March 9, 1971. If you look at the case files and the prosecutor’s indictments in the Madanoğlu case, you would see all the details, as well as the name and mission of my father-in-law.
Let me make a long story short: All the people who were arrested stayed in jail for 9-12 months; some of them were tortured, but all were acquitted in the end.
During the trial and after the delivery of judgments, the defendants and their relatives noted and argued in every conversation that the case and the allegations were all fabricated, that the suspects were unfairly accused and that the people in jail were simply innocent. Not only this, we strongly believed for years that they were actually innocent. Even the people who were arrested sincerely stated in personal conversations that they were innocent and that they were wrongfully prosecuted.
It has been many years (20 years). We lost my mother-in-law in 1990; my father-in-law moved in with us. We lived together for eight years in the same house until his death. His friends used to visit him in our house to chat with him. I realized that these were the conversations of old friends who were around 70-80 years old. Perhaps because they were old and the past events were no longer important at all, they were speaking of the March 9, 1971 coup differently; sometimes they were making jokes. Yet before they started to talk, they were asking whether the son-in-law was trustable.
In short, I realized that the prosecutor’s indictment in the Madanoğlu case was 100 percent true. The entire tape recording of Mahir Kaynak, who they argued had a mental disability, was also true; besides this, there were many other parts of the plan not included in the indictment. For instance, if the attempt had been successful, they would have removed the civilian government.
In other words, members of the family (his wife, two daughters and two sons-in-law) were just wrong, and the relatives of other defendants were also misled. And the entire nation was misguided and misinformed because they never mentioned or admitted it. If you pay attention, ilhan Selçuk denied [his guilt] until his death; he strongly argued that they were unfairly and unjustly arrested.
After these conversations, I asked my father-in-law about the whole matter. He said: “Son, we were staging a coup; this is not some sort of child’s play. We swore on a gun: I and my friends would never talk; we would pretend that this never happened.”
Let us come to the acquittal of the military servicemen and the civilians in the Madanoğlu case. I asked this to my father-in-law: “If you had committed a crime that back then merited the death penalty, why were you acquitted in this case?”
He said: “We realized that things were not going well, that we are heading to death penalty. The military servicemen held a meeting where we decided to forward a message to the upper ranks. After a week, we were acquitted in the first hearing.”
I asked about the upper ranks to identify their names. He said: “Who could that be? They were Muhsin Batur and Faruk Gürler, who were also involved in the coup committee. We also forwarded our message to the president as well.”
Dear Mehmet Selim Yavuz… [the letter continues]
Believe me this is the case. You could investigate what I said and rigorously research this matter.
I believe in your sincerity. I am sure that you are writing what you assume true. And like my father-in-law, your father, Ahmet Yavuz, is a patriotic man who would sacrifice his life for this nation. And they did (if they did) what they did for these values, like things done in the past.
However, whether or not something is a crime under the current laws, I believe that whether it is ethically sound is a different matter. I wish you strength and patience.
Best regards,
Case of March 9, 1971…
I took the following excerpt from Yıldıray Oğur’s column in the Taraf daily on Sept. 30, 2012, to serve as background information on the reader’s letter.
“The indictment was based on the voice recordings and statements of a MİT agent, Mahir Kaynak, who was invited to join the junta as a bright academic. The defendants argued that this was a plot staged against them and dismissed all allegations. When Mahir Kaynak relied on the voice recordings, the defense was designed to invalidate these two strong pieces of evidence.
The TRT technicians who submitted a report to the court as expert witnesses on the authenticity of the voice recordings, noting that one word was repeated two times in the recordings, said that there might be some alteration in the recordings.
Four defense lawyers, relying on the expert report, argued that the recordings were fabricated and asked the court to dismiss them as evidence. The military court handling the case decided not to consider the voice recordings as evidence.
[…]
“Neurologist Gençay Gürsoy, who was heard in the court as a witness, said: ‘My personal view is that this person, during my examination, was unable to interpret and view the outer world with objectivity’.”
[…]
“The Madanoğlu case, in which 32 suspects were tried, was concluded on Oct. 2, 1974. The court panel ruled that the arguments and allegations of the prosecutor and the intelligence agency were insufficient and decided to acquit the defendants.”
*This article appeared in its original form in the Taraf daily on March 1, 2013.
No comments:
Post a Comment