One Year On: Penal Courts Of Peace Erode Trust In Judiciary

One year since their formation, Turkey's Penal Courts of Peace have been criticized for eroding the public's trust in the judiciary due to their arbitrary detainments, arrests and judgments.

The Penal Courts of Peace have received plenty of criticism for empowering the “judges of peace” who serve in those courts with extraordinary powers, such as the authority to issue search warrants, detentions and the seizure of property. The courts have faced allegations that they are instruments for the enforcement of the government's wishes by instigating arrests based on the headlines of pro-government newspapers.

The first wave of operations by these courts began only a month after they were formed, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in June 2014. There were 112 courts of this kind in their inception in June 2014, while as of February 2015 there are 139 such courts in Turkey, according to a report in the Bugün daily on Wednesday.

Since a major corruption and bribery investigation became public on Dec. 17, 2013, the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has been working to reshape the judiciary and justice system according to its desires so as to prevent the investigations from deepening or the launch of additional, similar probes.

Operations against police officers involved in graft probe conducted by Penal Courts of Peace

Many operations targeting police officers have been carried out by the Penal Courts of Peace. Many of the police officers who were arrested following the December 2013 graft scandal -- which involved close associates of then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a number of Cabinet ministers and their family members -- have filed complaints about the judges overseeing their cases.

At least 100 high-ranking police officers have been detained in a series of coordinated raids in more than 20 provinces since July and Turkey's maximum four-day pre-arrest detention period has regularly been violated in these cases. These officers were involved in the December 2013 graft investigation and investigations into the Balyoz and Ergenekon coup cases, the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) and Tawhid-Salam, an alleged Iran-backed espionage network operating in Turkey.

Ergenekon is a terrorist organization accused of working to topple the democratically elected government in Turkey. Its existence was discovered when the police found a number of hand grenades in a house in the Ümraniye district of İstanbul in 2007. The suspects, who included members of the military, businessmen and journalists, appeared before a court for the first time in 2008 in what many described as Turkey's “trial of the century.”

The suspects were sentenced to lengthy prison terms by the İstanbul 13th High Criminal Court in August 2013 but were released after the AK Party revised legislation abolishing the specially authorized courts (ÖYM) that were overseeing the case and decreased the maximum period of detention before a final verdict to five years.

Penal Courts of Peace accused of covering up graft cases

One of the most serious criticisms made about the Penal Courts of Peace has been the claim that they played a large role in covering up the December 2013 graft scandal.

The verdict of non-prosecution given by Istanbul Public Prosecutors İstanbul İsmail Uçar, İrfan Fidan and Fuzuli Aydoğan regarding the graft scandal resulted in the closure of the case. The scandal involved suspects such as President Erdoğan's son Bilal Erdoğan, Saudi Arabian businessman Yasin al-Qadi, who until recently was on the US Treasury Department's “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” list, and a swathe of influential Turkish businesspeople.

Opposition criticizes dropping of graft probes

In October of last year, Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu criticized the government over the dropping of the court case by prosecutors. The leader of the main opposition said: “Whatever you [the AK Party] close, this case will not finish. There will come a day when you will be called to account for these charges.”

Kılıçdaroğlu accused the AK Party of being behind the cover-up, saying: “If there is no evidence in this case, rest assured there can be no evidence in any corruption case anywhere in the world. There is evidence everywhere. Money, dollars, Turkish lira, money-counting machines, recordings, photographs, films… all of these are in there. But according to the prosecutor, there's nothing.”

Police operations against media outlets ordered by Penal Courts of Peace

On Dec. 14, 2014, Samanyolu TV CEO Hidayet Karaca, the Zaman daily's Editor-in-chief Ekrem Dumanlı and dozens of journalists, scriptwriters and police officers were detained via the order of the İstanbul First Criminal Court of Peace. Karaca was charged with heading a terrorist group based on a TV series that was broadcast years ago on the Samanyolu TV channel. Dumanlı and some others were released on Dec. 19, while Karaca has been in jail pending trial for over 200 days.

Penal Courts of Peace answer only to themselves

The Penal Courts of Peace have also been heavily criticized due to their closed system of appeal. For instance, when an appeal is made about the verdict of a Criminal Court of First Instance, the appeal comes to judges from a High Criminal Court. In contrast, the Penal Courts of Peace act as closed-circuit courts, meaning that an appeal can only be made to a different courthouse of the same level of court and often to the same judge who issued the original ruling. The Penal Courts of Peace seem to have been designed by the government to go after critics and opponents by orchestrating what appear to be mock trials in politically motivated cases.

EAJ president: Penal Courts of Peace ‘in charge'

The European Association of Judges (EAJ) forms part of the International Association of Judges (IAJ) and represents 44 associations throughout Europe. EAJ President Christophe Regnard recently wrote in a letter to a Turkish news portal, saying that the Penal Courts of Peace were completely “in charge” and at liberty to dealing with criminal matters as they saw fit.

“A court of the same type and level considers objections against the decisions of such a court; therefore … [there is no] option to involve a higher instance court,” Regnard wrote to Grihat, a Turkish web-based news portal.

People detained over tweets on orders of Penal Courts of Peace

In one notorious incident, journalist and television presenter Sedef Kabaş was detained and later released on Dec. 30, 2014 because she posted tweets critical of the government's handling of the December 2013 corruption investigations. Police officers searched her home and seized her computer in the Çekmeköy district of İstanbul early on the morning of that day after a prosecutor's complaint.

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)