Have you heard a spy freed upon request?

Foreign Affairs Minister Çavuşoğlu spoke in Brussels and said, “We deported two journalists. They were from different countries. Both of them were apprehended for spying. Upon the request from their countries, we extradited them. There has not been a verdict yet.”

How is that possible?

If there is no verdict on them, how did you conclude they were a spy? How could you be sure without a final decision by the court?

Right after, you said using journalists as spies has become a fashion. Is it not problematic to point the finger to journalists as spies without a final judicial decision? 

Independent judiciary

You are talking about the release of spies as the decision of the administration, as if it is normal to solve the problem by delivering a request from one government to another and releasing those arrested from a heavy crime like spying, with just one word.

Won’t they ask, “Is it not the judiciary who is taking care of the spying cases?”

Are you aware of the fact that to downgrade an accusation like spying to a gesture of give and take between governments will dilute the crime of spying and create a credibility problem?

Won’t they ask, “This nullifies your rhetoric that these arrests are taking place independent of the political authority and it is impossible to interfere with the judiciary?”

Who would believe it?

Did you realize how this will work in favor of the Germans who have been spreading the view that their citizens are being arrested for barter with the members of Fethullahist Terror Organization (FETÖ) and political negotiation? Did you foresee that this will harm the credibility of judicial decisions?

If you have consciously uttered those words, then that’s another story. If your purpose was to make people realize that we use accusations of spying as a tool, then this is something else. If it carried a subtle message, then be sure that the mission is accomplished.

Otherwise, that’s not good at all.

If we do not know the difference between a journalist and a spy we have a problem, said Çavuşoğlu in the same statement.

He is right.

But if what is on trial is not journalism, but spying, not being a defender of human rights but a spy, if what is being accused of is not being an opponent but being a terrorist...

Why don’t you show that immediately through the legal cases of daily Cumhuriyet, Büyükada and Deniz Yücel.

The accusation of “helping the purpose of a terrorist organization, acting as if supporting a terror organization without being a member of a terror organization” renders making such categorical differentiation impossible.

This makes it sound like, “All traitors and terrorists are opposing therefore all in opposition are traitors and terrorists because they have a common purpose.”

It does not leave room for criticism without committing a crime, to be in opposition and to defend human rights, which is also making it difficult to make a differentiation between what is legal and illegal.

It is so easy to refute the black propaganda of our European friends.

Show concrete evidence. Let them see who is a spy, who is a journalist and who is of dissent.