Turkey Now Ruled By Mandates, No Longer Ruled By Law

Yücel Sayman, the former head of the İstanbul Bar Association, criticized the government at a conference in Antalya on Saturday, saying Turkey has become a state no longer governed by law but rather a country ruled by mandates.

Sayman, who is also a professor of law at Medipol University, was moderator at a panel discussion titled “Reflections of International Law on Turkey” that was organized by the Antalya Bar Association on Saturday. There, he said he quit being a “man of the law” a year ago. Stating that the rule of law has been undermined with omnibus legislation packages, Sayman stated: “This isn't law. Things are being done outside the law. One colleague told [me], ‘These are commandments' -- yes, we are being ruled by mandates. This is the reason why I quit law -- because there is no such thing as law [in Turkey].”

Maintaining that a police operation against independent media outlets on Dec. 14 was a “silencing operation,” Sayman went on to note that the operation was performed under the pretense that the accused were trying to take over the sovereignty of the state.

Many distinguished academics and university students as well as the heads of 10 provincial bar associations were present at the panel discussion.

A government-orchestrated crackdown on independent critical media outlets took place on Dec. 14 with police operations targeting Turkey's highest-circulating newspaper, Zaman, and popular national TV network Samanyolu TV, which led to the detention of the top managers of the media outlets.

A total of 31 people -- mostly high-ranking media personnel, directors and producers of popular television serials and police officers -- were taken into custody by the police. Zaman Editor-in-Chief Ekrem Dumanlı was released on Friday, Dec. 19, five days after initially being detained. Hidayet Karaca, general manager of the Samanyolu Broadcasting Group, remains in jail awaiting trial over charges of forming a terrorist organization.

Hakan Canduran, head of the Ankara Bar Association, criticized the revision of the law on search and seizures, which he said was changed during graft probes that went public on Dec. 17 and 25, 2013. The law previously stated the need for “strong suspicion based on evidence” to “reasonable suspicion” before obtaining a warrant to search and/or seize the property of a suspect.

“If you use the law as a weapon, it will turn on you one day. Our problem is that we don't want the law to be defined according to the people, the government or the state. Once we solve this problem, I think we [Turkey] will get somewhere,” Canduran said.

The detention of journalists and TV producers came only days after the government-sponsored bill making it possible to arrest suspects based on "reasonable suspicion" was signed into law by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The reasonable suspicion law lowers the threshold for searches and reverses a reform from February 2014 that allowed courts to grant the police the power to search people and property only when there was "strong suspicion based on concrete evidence."

Kenan Baş/Özkan Mayda (Cihan/Today's Zaman)