Journalists Ahmet Altan, Yasemin Çongar, Yıldıray Oğur and Mehmet Baransu were sentenced to a total of 23 years in prison at the end of the case

CANSU PİŞKİN, İSTANBUL

The sentences handed down on former executives of the now-defunct Taraf daily Ahmet Altan, Yasemin Çongar, Yıldıray Oğur and reporter Mehmet Baransu at the end of a long-running trial into alleged publication of a secret military document have been taken to a regional court of appeals.

The four journalists were on trial for allegedly acquiring and publishing in the newspaper a confidential war plan called “Egemen (Sovereign) Operation Plan,” although much of the press coverage about the case claimed it was about the publication of the so-called “Balyoz” (Sledgehammer) documents falsely alleging a coup plot by some of the military brass in 2010. Baransu has been in pre-trial detention since March 2015 as part of the case. The first court hearing in the trial was held in 2016.

Altan, Çongar, Oğur and Baransu were all convicted under laws protecting state secrets at the end of the final court hearing on 4 March 2022. The İstanbul 13th High Criminal Court, which oversaw the trial, sentenced Baransu to a total of 13 years for obtaining and exposing secret documents under Article 327 of the Turkish Criminal Code (6 years) and under Article 329 (7 years). Altan, Çongar and Oğur were each sentenced to 3 years and 4 months for “obtaining” secret documents under Article 327.

Lawyers representing Altan, Çongar and Oğur argued in their appeal petitions that the convictions were unlawful.

“Judicial absurdity”

Altan and Çongar’s lawyer Figen Albuga Çalıkuşu underlined that the subject of the trial presented to public as “Balyoz Trial” was in fact the alleged publication of the Egemen war plan.

In a statement issued on 5 December 2014, following an internal investigation on the matter, the General Staff stated that the Egemen war plan had been destroyed on 18 December 2008.

The General Staff itself confirmed that the Egemen war plan had been destroyed and the military prosecutor’s office, which conducted an investigation into the matter, ruled for non-prosecution after concluding that there was no evidence indicating that the destroyed document had been leaked, Çalıkuşu told Expression Interrupted. Thus, the Istanbul 13th High Criminal Court’s verdict based on the alleged procurement of a non-existing document was against the law.

Describing the court’s decision to let Balyoz trial suspects join the case as “co-plaintiff” as unlawful, Çalıkuşu said, “Since the matter in dispute is crimes against the state, the individuals cannot be listed as ‘co-plaintiff.’ I believe that the Istanbul 13th High Criminal Court’s ruling will be revoked as a result of the appeal due to all these aforementioned nonprocedural and unlawful points.”

Çalıkuşu called the conviction of her clients for obtaining in 2010 a war plan that was destroyed in 2008 a “judicial absurdity.”

“Who obtained it? It is unknown. The person who supposedly obtained the destroyed the document from the General Staff’s cosmic room is also nowhere to be found,” she said, referring to the archive where the military’s most classified secrets are held. “We are now facing a ridiculous situation in which my clients are accused of reviewing a document that was destroyed, that physically does not exist and could not be verified to be a copy of the original that was destroyed.”

In the petition she submitted to the regional court of appeals, Çalıkuşu emphasized that the trial court, even in its justified decision of 618 pages, did not provide any explanation on the evidence, which were either used as a basis for the verdict or rejected during the course of trial. She maintained that the elements of the impugned crime did not exist and asked the appeals court to revoke the lower court’s verdict and acquit her clients.

“We’re not facing a question of law but rationality and logic”

Oğur’s lawyer Gülçin Avşar said that the case had wrong foundations to begin with and could not be set on a right track at any stage. Avşar said that the indictment given to the defendants and lawyers was different from the one summarized in the courtroom and added that the indictment contained sections “copied and pasted” from other indictments, including a sentence that referred to “defendant Can Dündar.”

“The court should have returned this indictment in accordance with the code of criminal procedure. It was clear as day that it was a careless, inattentive and unjust indictment. However, they didn’t return it,” she said.

Noting that the six-year trial process was full of confusion, Avşar criticized the court’s decision to accept Balyoz trial defendants’ request to join the case as co-plaintiff even though the trial had no connection with the Balyoz case. “Even though some requests for joining the case were denied, for some reason the others were accepted. Frequent replacement of court panels and the resulting difficulty for them to examine the case file that consists of dozens of folders led to this judicial abnormality,” said Avşar.

Emphasizing that the prosecution presented not even a single evidence either in the indictment or their final opinion as to the accusations with respect to Oğur seeing or obtaining the Egemen war plan, Avşar said: “We are not facing a question of law but of reason and logic. My client was tried for obtaining a destroyed, nonexistent document that could not be scientifically identified. The court did not explain how my client could have possibly seen this document that was in Cosmic Room until 2008. Yet, he was convicted.”