A Turkish court convicted Vedat Demir, a professor of communications and former columnist, on terrorism-related charges based on five one-dollar bills, personal notes, tweets and conversations, and sentenced him to six years and seven months imprisonment last Monday, according to Turkish media.
Demir was detained in July 2016, a couple of days after an abortive putsch, and stayed in pre-trial detention for 7 months until he was released pending trial. He was accused of being a follower of the Gülen movement, a faith-based group inspired by US based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement since the corruption investigations of December 17-25, 2013, which implicated then-Prime Minister Erdoğan, his family members and his inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began to target its members. He locked up thousands including many prosecutors, judges and police officers involved in the investigation as well as journalists who reported on them.
Erdoğan intensified the crackdown on the movement following a coup attempt on July 15, 2016 that he accused Gülen of masterminding. The crackdown also targeted political opponents of the government, Kurdish activists and human rights defenders, among others. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the abortive putsch or any terrorist activity.
In an opinion piece published by Ahval news website, Demir said he was expecting to be acquitted of the charges given the fact that he wasn’t involved in any wrong-doing and there was no evidence to prove him otherwise. Yet, things have changed dramatically when the judges presiding the case were reshuffled and a judge infamous for convicting dissidents, Akın Gürlek, was appointed to his case. Demir says it wasn’t even possible for Gürlek to read his case file, which was over thousand pages, before ruling on his case.
Gürlek is known for convicting jailed former co-chair of pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtaş, some members of the group “Academics for Peace”, a group of academics who drew the ire of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan by issuing a declaration demanding a peaceful solution to country’s Kurdish question and criticizing Turkish security forces for a heavy-handed response that saw citizens confined under long-lasting curfews in predominantly Kurdish cities under bombardment, and Canan Kaftancıoğlu, one of the most influential figures of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), among others. Gürlek is also known for defying the ruling of Turkish Constitutional Court, which requested the lower court to retry CHP deputy Enis Berberoğlu.
Demir was summarily dismissed from his job at the İstanbul University with an emergency decree. He says the university’s president included his name into the list of personnel suspected of ties to terrorist organizations due to his political views, without any administrative or legal procedures, which led to his dismissal.
He later asked the court to inquire why he was dismissed and the official answer sent by the university to the court said it was based on “institution’s opinion.” Yet, the court later mentioned Demir’s dismissal with a decree-law as an evidence of his “membership in a terrorist organization.”
Following the abortive putsch, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency and carried out a massive purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight. Over 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors as well as 20,571 members of the armed forces were summarily removed from their jobs for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations” by emergency decree-laws subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny.
“Yarına Bakış,” the daily that Demir was writing for was among the 164 media outlets that were shut down by the Turkish government during the state of emergency.
Gulnoza Said, head of Europe and Central Asia Program at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) criticized the decision from her Twitter account. She said, Demir’s lawyer was not allowed to speak during the hearing, which ended in minutes.
A #Turkish court sentenced journalist and academician @vedatdemir_tr to 7 yrs on terrorism charges on Nov 30. Demir told @CPJ_Eurasia that his lawyer was not allowed to speak, and the hearing ended within minutes. Turkish authorities should drop the charges against Vedat Demir
— Gulnoza Said (@gulnozas) December 3, 2020
“The proof that Turkish authorities had against Vedat Demir? Five one dollar bills, personal notes, tweets and conversations,” she said. “Having been employed by a shuttered media outlet. That’s the proof for terrorism? No, that’s a new low for you, Turkey.”
Turkish government claims that followers of the Gülen movement used one dollar bills to send coded messages. Consequently, possession of one-dollar bills have been accepted as evidence by the courts, including in the case of NASA scientist Serkan Gölge who was imprisoned for nearly three years for bogus terrorism charges. In 2018 a popular pop singer known as “Mabel Matiz” testified to prosecutors about using one dollar bills in a video clip shot in 2017.
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