They have all together saved their day

Following the ruling not to prosecute in the investigation concerning the incident that resulted with the death of 34 citizens at Uludere, the families of the victims filed an objection to the Air Force Command Military Court. 

This objection, despite the dissenting vote of the chief judge, was rejected by two lower ranking military judges. 

Chief justice in that case, Air Force Major Mustafa Pürtaş, in his dissenting view said, “This decision of non-prosecution will not satisfy the public conscience, even though it looks suitable in the short run and in favor of the common good; in the long run, it will disrupt the sense of justice and damage the state; that is why I have a negative vote against the majority.”

Major Pürtaş’s dissenting sentence proved to be true. Going through the motions did not work and the truth spilled out. 

From Kemal Göktaş’s story at daily Cumhuriyet, we leant that all military officials on duty on the region that night evaluated the people in question were not terrorists but were smugglers. 

However, the intelligence mistake, which we know stemmed from the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), caused a massacre, including an order that was made to be signed by the Chief of General Staff in his home at midnight. 

These were known during the investigation by the office of the military prosecutor; however, the office of the military prosecutor did not mention any of these in his non-prosecution verdict. 

The military prosecutor said in his non-prosecution decision there was no reason to open a public case because they made inevitable mistakes while they were performing their duties. 

Obviously, the military prosecutor did not take into consideration the evaluations of the duty officers in the region in order to proceed on “day to day basis.” He never mentioned them in his decision. 

The MİT providing misleading information to the prosecutor conducting the investigation in Adana and hiding the truth is the cream on top in all of this. 

Public officials should know everything they do to obstruct justice sooner or later also damages the sense of justice as the military judge wrote in his dissenting view. 

PM travels covertly in his own country 

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu talked about “breaking the backbone of terror” in New York. He said the war against the terror organization of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was successful. This should make everybody happy, right? Anyone who wants the deaths to end and the arms to silence would be happy, but is that really the truth? 

Remember, Davutoğlu went to Diyarbakır from Konya during bayram without telling anybody. He went to Van after the bayram prayers and then flew to Yüksekova on a helicopter. Journalist Akif Beki wrote about this in his column in daily Hürriyet. It was a secret operation; not even his very close ones knew of this. Konya people though he would spend the night at Konya; many of the accompanying staff who boarded the plane did not know they would go to Diyarbakır. 

We would read about the visit of U.S. presidents and secretary of states visiting their troops in Iraq but this is the first time a prime minister had to act so secretly in his own country. 

It is indeed possible to understand why he acted this way, but then he should not come out and say “We have broken the back of terror,” because then it sounds funny.