Renowned novelist Ahmet Altan accuses prosecutor in defense against coup charges

ISTANBUL

Renowned jailed journalist and novelist Ahmet Altan harshly slammed the prosecutor who prepared an indictment against him in a court hearing on June 22 as part of the alleged “media leg” of the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ), which is widely believed to have perpetrated the July 2016 failed coup.

Declaring that none of the charges against him in the indictment prepared by Prosecutor Can Tuncay could be proved, Altan called the indictment “judicial porn.” 

“To put forward accusations that have no coherence whatsoever and are not based on any evidence is to ravish the law. Indeed, this prosecutor has made ravishing the law such a habit that our indictment has turned into pornography of the law,” Altan told the court in Istanbul in his defense through the voice and video informatics system (SEGBİS) from Silivri jail.

“The recklessness of the prosecutor who authored this untruthful and nonsensical indictment proves this has become a habit of the justice system,” he also said. 

During his testimony, Altan said “one cannot make sense of the indictment.”

“The prosecutor doesn’t care about being sensible. He wrote whatever came to his mind. The indictment has become an utterly confusing soup of lies,” he said. 

Moreover, Altan slammed Tuncay for “putting charges in the indictment that have nothing to do with him.”

“Your [the prosecutor’s] investigations do not have the slightest credit. Neither in Turkey nor in the world,” he said. 

Saying that the suspects were alleged to know the men “who are alleged to know the men who are alleged to have directed the coup,” Altan said that the claim is the basis of the whole indictment.

“There are said to be some men who directed this coup… There are said to be some men who knew these men… And we are said to know those men. I know it is very difficult to believe but this is what the indictment sets out in all those pages. Let me ask this: How can ‘knowing’ someone be accepted as the evidence of a crime? If you know a criminal does that make you a criminal, too?” he added. 

A total of 17 suspects, including Altan, his journalist and former economics professor brother Mehmet Altan, as well as journalist Nazlı Ilıcak, are being tried in the case on charges of “attempting to overthrow the constitutional order,” “attempting to overthrow the parliament” and “attempting to overthrow the government.”

While facing three aggravated life sentences for the charges, they also face an additional prison term of 15 years on the charge of “committing crimes on behalf of a terrorist organization without being a member.”