If you believe justice has been done, you'll believe anything

Justice Ministry Undersecretary Kenan İpek held an “iftar” (fast breaking) dinner last Ramadan in Istanbul. Judges and prosecutors serving in Istanbul participated in this dinner, as well as members of the Supreme Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) and the HSYK secretary general.

“An attempted intervention has been added to the history of coups. We all know what had experienced during the Dec. 17 and Dec. 25 [2013] processes had nothing to do with the alleged justifications," İpek told participants at this dinner.

İpek, in his capacity as the undersecretary of the Justice Ministry, is a natural member of the HSYK, the council that conducts the appointments of judges and prosecutors, as well as their disciplinary investigations. 

In other words, the fate of the judges and prosecutors he was addressing, saying that “Dec. 17 and 25 were coup attempts,” is between his two lips.

When İpek delivered that speech at that dinner, I wrote: “In such an environment, how are we going to trust that a truly just investigation and trial will be conducted? It had been disclosed that he had been exerting pressure on the prosecutor to obstruct the graft investigations. It has been recorded in official documents that he gave verbal orders on the phone to the Chief Prosecutor Hüseyin Baş in İzmir to stop the graft investigations in that city. We all know, and the judges and prosecutors who attended that dinner know as well, what happened to that prosecutor.”

Two months have passed and an Istanbul prosecutor has decided to abort the Dec. 17 investigation. He has ruled that the eavesdropping that was conducted without a court order was illegal evidence, thus putting himself in place of the court.

We are expected to believe that this decision was made based on “lawful justifications.”

Come on now, just come on.

As things get tough…

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu assembled the “wise people committee" on Oct. 19, and they discussed the resolution process for 10 hours.

The wise people handed in a “to-do” list to the prime minister, but it is obvious that what is in the minds of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Prime Minister Davutoğlu - rather than what is on that list - will be carried out.

The unignorable component of the peace process is democratization. Flawless, complete freedom of thought, expression and association have to be implemented for the process to proceeds and for further stages to be discussed.

However, we are yet to see the government prepare to take a step in this area.

The government’s priority is to make the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) lay down its arms and encourage those who are in the mountains to come down and join the political process. I don't know how they can think that already tried methods, such as “the call to those PKK members who have not been involved in crimes” can be of any use now.

Thinking that the PKK would lay down arms and return to politics does not suit the region’s realities at a time when the Kurdish cantons in northern Syria are fighting to survive.

The government also has to solve problems such as those created when it did not take the required steps at the time when the process was still being discussed enthusiastically.

It is now apparent that each delay in the process introduces new issues that have never been planned before. For this reason, they should stop wasting time and share with the public openly and clearly whatever they are going to do.