The court separates the case file for journalist Metin Cihan, who is on trial for sharing TÜGVA documents and sentences Ramazan Aydoğdu for sending the documents to Cihan

CANSU PİŞKİN, İSTANBUL

The eighth hearing in the trial of journalist Metin Cihan for sharing documents of the Turkish Youth Foundation (TÜGVE) which allegedly demonstrate improper acquisition of positions within the state, and Ramazan Aydoğdu who allegedly leaked the documents on charges of “illegally obtaining or distributing personal data” was held at the İstanbul 22nd Criminal Court of First Instance on 28 April 2023.

Aydoğdu and lawyers for the parties attended the hearing, which P24 monitored.

Lawyer for TÜGVA delivered a statement on the court expert’s report and said that “The content of the documents found on Aydoğdu’s phone and computer and the content of the documents shared with Cihan are the same.” The lawyer for TÜGVA argued this proved that the documents had been shared and requested conviction for Cihan and Aydoğdu.

“Court expert’s report lacking in legal basis”

Aydoğdu delivered a statement about the court expert’s report and said that the report did not contain any evidence showing that he had been in contact with Cihan or sent him documents. Aydoğdu said, “I did not share documents with Metin Cihan. I do not even possess some of the documents that Cihan disclosed.”

Aydoğdu’s lawyer said that no causal connection between his client and Cihan had been established by the court expert’s report and requested his client’s acquittal.

Cihan’s lawyer Özgür Urfa said that the court expert being a police officer constituted a violation of the right to a fair trial and the principle of court impartiality. Lawyer Urfa said “The report is based on the premiss that the Twitter account subject to the trial belongs to my client. However, my client has not acquiesced to owning the account and it has not been established that he owns the account.” Lawyer Urfa said that the court expert’s report was lacking in legal basis and that it had not been established that the documents subject to the trial belonged to TÜGVA and requested that the intervening party be asked whether the information and the documents belonged to them.

The prosecutor submitted their final opinion on the case and requested that the case file for Metin Cihan be separated and Aydoğdu be sentenced for the impugned crime.

Aydoğdu’s lawyer said that as per Article 3 of the Law on the Protection of Personal Data, victims can only be real persons and requested his client’s acquittal on the grounds that elements of the crime had not existed. Cihan’s lawyer Urfa stated that they did not agree with the opinion of the prosecutor as the case file was incomplete and required evidence had not been gathered.

The court ruled to separate Metin Cihan’s case file and sentenced defendant Ramazan Aydoğdu to 1 year and 8 months of imprisonment for “illegally obtaining personal data” and five months for “contamination of data.” The verdict was deferred for both sentences.

Background of the case

Metin Cihan had shared documents on Twitter which allegedly show that TÜGVA, one of the founders of which is Bilal Erdoğan, son of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had assigned hundreds of people to offices within the military, the police and other state institutions, had kept records on the assignees and therefore had obtained positions within many state organisation including the judiciary, the police force and the army.

Cihan had said that the documents had been sent to him by an employee of TÜGVA. TÜGVA’s President Enes Eminoğlu claimed in a statement on 12 October 2021 that the documents were fake, but said in another statement on 13 October 2022 that “They have taken the documents from inside, there is some true information.”

As part of the investigation carried out by the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor’s office, TÜGVA employee Ramazan Aydoğdu was imprisoned pending trial on grounds of sending photographs of the documents to Cihan. Aydoğdu was released after the third hearing held on 11 May 2022.

Cihan, who resides abroad, is standing trial on charges of “successively and illegally obtaining or disseminating personal data,” while Aydoğdu is charged with “illegally obtaining or disseminating personal data, including contaminating and destroying data on informatics systems, rendering them inaccessible or placing data on the system etc.”