Efforts to present the December 17 graft probe as a “coup”attempt requires an accusation of police officers, judges or prosecutors who were involved in the case. And to that end they have freely abused figures whom we thought to be respectable people until recently.
A prominent name in the December 17 graft probe wasProsecutor Celal Kara. In a way no democratic country would allow, he was “severed” from the case by Hadi Salihoğlu, who was appointed Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor instead of Turan Çolakkadı. And the newly elected Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) suspended him from office.
Sure enough, the TVs go on with salvos against Celal Kara. I collected the allegations about him. I talked to him; here is my account:
*ALLEGATION # 1: Kezban Hatemi claimed that Hakan Sıralı, after replacing Yakup Saygılı as Financial Crimes Unit Chief on 18 December 2013, sent the police’s case summary to the prosecutor’s office without signing the document; hence, you are said to have started an irregular process. Moreover, the case summary is labeled “ghost”, whereby they aim to manipulate public opinion.
REPLY: Here is Celal Kara’s explanation:
“1) As prosecutor I am not bound by the police’s case summary. Even without the summary I’m able to complete my work and write the indictment.
2) I already had the digital version of the case summary that was prepared by Financial Crimes Unit Chief Yakup Saygılı and his colleagues, who are under my supervision.
3) I asked Saygılı’s replacement, Sıralı, to complete the case summary and send it to me even if without a signature, because I needed the suspect depositions and evidences that were captured during and after December 17.
The debate is conducted over the case summary. My concern, on the other hand, was to have the suspects brought to my office before their detention period came to an end. It was not a question of case summary; it was a question of evidences captured during the operation, of depositions at the police, and of interrogation of suspects before their detention period was up.”
*ALLEGATION # 2: The file is not registered at the National Judiciary Informatics System (UYAP).
REPLY: “The rule for UYAP is to enter the initial offense. You start with article 220/1 of the Turkish Penal Code, with someone called ‘organization leader”. There is no interim registration; you still don’t have that procedure. You don’t enter suspects and crimes to UYAP in between. In other words, you don’t register each suspect during technical pursuit.
For one thing, you have to wait until the crime is clarified. You only can determine the legal nature of the act after evidences are collected. Moreover, the files at UYAP can be accessed by a limited number of people with password, but in practice, because of the work load and the need to make things go, clerks are given passwords too. Sometimes clerks share the passwords.
Suspects may establish a relation of interest with clerks and find out if there is any technical pursuit or investigation concerning them, compromising an inquiry that is supposed to be conducted in secret. Besides, this file is subject to an interdiction by Istanbul 5th Criminal Court of Peace, dated September 14, 2012.
In addition, Barış Güler’s name was entered in UYAP in August 2013, although it was not imperative. Article 17/4 of the HSYK law states that in matters of judicial discretion and judicial power board inspectors cannot interfere with inspections. It is in the prosecutor’s power to decide for the name to be entered in UYAP and the timing of the entry.”
REPLY: “There are tens of thousands of investigations at the Istanbul Courthouse. Did Çolakkadı know all of them?
There is no legal requirement for that. There is a great number of inquiries conducted under the Criminal Procedure Code’s 250th article and the Anti-terror Law’s 10th article; did Çolakkadı know any of them? Moreover, my first degree superior is Zekeriya Öz and he knew about the investigation. Don’t you think you need to ask Chief Prosecutor Çolakkadı if he knew about the arrest of the DHKP-C lawyers until the very last moment? Keep in mind that chief Prosecutors and police chiefs have constant contact with ministers of justice and interior respectively.
A choice was made not to inform them and the main concern was to prevent the case from being compromised. As for the law enforcement agents, they presented information regarding the investigation to the then-Istanbul Police Chief Hüseyin Çapkın the last day, acting as judicial police.”
REPLY: “Wiretapping is allowed if both parties are involved in crime. The Supreme Court of Appeals has precedents. There are instances of whole families engaged in drug trafficking. How are we to uncover the crime if we don’t eavesdrop on them all?”
REPLY: “There was no decision of technical pursuit about any cabinet minister. For instance, Barış Güler is talking with his father and you inevitably have Muammer Güler’s words on the record.
It would be absurd to take out one of the two parties in a conversation; it would be a meaningless conversation. We have to record and preserve the whole conversation in order to keep the evidence intact. If they were deputies and not ministers we would ask their parliamentary immunity to be lifted and then we would make them part of our investigation file. You don’t give up on a technical pursuit because one of the parties is a deputy or cabinet minister. It’s just that their inquiry procedure is different. Cabinet ministers are subject to special inquiry.”
REPLY: “We are not after any cabinet minister. We are in pursuit of a criminal organization under Reza Zarrab’s leadership. He turns out to be in relation with ministers. Our task here is,at the end of the investigation, to write a case summary about the coincidental evidences concerning the ministers and send it to the Parliament. Which is something that we did. Cutting the investigation short and sending information about the ministers to the Parliament would compromise the confidentiality of the proceedings; we wouldn’t be able to complete the investigation and collect the evidences. Investigation of judges and prosecutors are subject to permission as well. However, you wait until the investigation is concluded.
It is only afterwards that you write to the HSYK and ask for their permission, in case a judge or prosecutor is involved. No one is informed until a file is completed or an investigation is concluded. This has been the practice all along. Moreover, apart from conversations with the ministers, there are loads of wiretaps revealing corrupt relations. Conversations of bribery where Reza Zarrab is talking to Minister Zafer Çağlayan’s son Kaan Çağlayan, or Minister Muammer Güler’s son Barış Güler… Why are these conversations ignored and what is the reason for the verdict of non-prosecution?”
* ALLEGATION # 7: Prosecutor Ekrem Aydıner, who gave the verdict of non-prosecution, talked of too many wiretapping decisions for simple and too many reasons.
REPLY: “Wiretapping decisions were given not by one judge, but tens of different judges. 32 criminal courts of peace in Istanbul have at least one decision each. Some of them have more than one decision. There is no way a prosecutor can interfere with a judge’s discretion.”
REPLY: “I was in pursuit of an organized crime. My concern was to reveal the crime in all its aspects. As long as there is no irreparable damage like homicide there is no interference. This is not an offense that involves just one person! If it were, you would be justified to ask, “Why didn’t you prevent the acts of bribery?”
Published at BGN News, 1/25/2015
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