Caricature Of Justice And The EU

I have just read that the EU Commission said they had taken note of the closing of the corruption case in Turkey. I am sure that they took note of more than just this outrageous legal scandal of covering up corruption and graft, but they cannot say more.
I am sure they are aware of the fact that Turkey is slipping into an authoritarian regime at full speed, but the Commission is handling Turkey as if it were still a candidate country for the European Union. Their pretense is good for both the EU and Turkey.
As such, being franker may lead to cutting relations, and might be a gift for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who would feel that he had got rid of yet another obstacle to his absolute rule.
Having started with the closure of the corruption case, which is of course a legal "miracle" on its own, despite the existence of very powerful evidence, documents and so on in the files, so many other things are happening in Turkey right now showing just how the justice system has turned into a caricature.
Look, we still have Sevan Nişanyan, a Turkish-Armenian writer, serving his prison time as the only person in Turkey who was given a prison sentence for building something against town planning codes. Our very president is now preparing to sit in an illegal place -- called the AK Saray (White Palace) to associate it with the Justice and Development Party (AK Party). When I say “illegal” I am not referring to the president's so-called “impartial” position and his breaching of it by acting as the spokesperson of the AK Party, as he did in calling the palace AK Saray. This AK Saray was built in spite of at least three different court orders saying that construction should be stopped immediately. Erdoğan openly challenged them by saying that “if you have power, come and demolish it.” In this Turkey, poor Nişanyan is serving and will be serving an indeterminate term in prison for allegedly illegal construction in Şirince, Kuşadası, İzmir province. Everyone says that Nişanyan turned Şirince into a paradise with all the things he erected there, and he is now being called to pay the price.
Well, not only the Nişanyan case shows us the caricature-like state of the justice system in Turkey. On exactly the same day as an İstanbul prosecutor closed down the graft probe by saying that he did not find evidence or the file strong enough to pursue, a family was giving an account before a criminal court in İstanbul. They are the Sarısülük family, the mother and brothers of Ethem Sarısülük, who was killed during the Gezi protests by a police officer who fired his gun and shot Ethem in the head. This police officer brought a complaint against the family, saying that they were insulting him during the trial, and the prosecutor launched a case against the family. The photo in which the whole family was sitting in the dock in court was a tragicomic picture of the justice system in Turkey. Our extremely talented prosecutors who somehow managed to close the corruption file could not find anything in favor of the family and sent them all to court to be tried.
Exactly when the prosecutors were closing down the corruption file, police officers, some of whom were on the investigation team into the corruption scandal, were being transferred to a maximum-security prison in Silivri. You know they are being tried now as suspects in a coup attempt against the government, because prosecutors interpreted the corruption file as a coup attempt against the government.
Well, I am not waiting for the EU Commission to draw a caricature of our justice system in such a detailed manner, for the sake of holding Turkey within the grip of the European system, but I am sure they are aware all of this.

ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ (Cihan/Today's Zaman)