INTRODUCTION

In the second week of May 2024, 48 people, including high school students, were detained in hate operations carried out by Istanbul police under the name of “fight against terrorism”. After the interrogation procedures, 28 of them were referred to the court and 28 of them were arrested, while underage girls were recorded in judicial records as “children dragged into crime”. The indictment of 41 people related to the operation in question was made public in early July and it is understood that 19 people, mainly university student girls, are still in detention. The law enforcement agency justified the operation on the basis of a scheme it had prepared in advance and false evidence it had produced, using all kinds of technical surveillance and wiretapping facilities, and the testimonies of the victims were not responded to either by the law enforcement agency or the court. The police operation, the indictment prepared by the prosecutor’s office and the arrest warrant issued by the court have shown that the targeted victims’ “efforts to cling to life” are being treated as the activities of a terrorist organisation.

The investigation process that started with the police operations is very important in terms of understanding the deplorable and hateful state that the law enforcement and prosecution authorities are in. The operations carried out by the state’s law enforcement and prosecution mechanisms against innocent women and girls who are targeted by the government, either on the instructions of the political power or for different ideological reasons, have already exceeded the limits of public reason and conscience. When the details of the indictment are analysed, it is understood that “false evidence and evaluations were produced by the law enforcement agencies on the instructions of the political power, and that the quantity of these was inflated with wiretapping and surveillance notes consisting of records of daily social life and not criminal in nature and constituted the basis of the indictment”. At the end of 3 months, the police, who had requested the judicial authorities with the claim that they had no other option but physical and technical surveillance to detect the “terrorist(!)” activities of children under the age of 18, convinced the investigation prosecutor that “going to the cinema, bowling, going to the shopping mall or planning a trip abroad” were acts of terrorism and that underage children were members of the “restructuring”.

During the first hearing, which started on Monday 23 September and ended on Friday 27 September, the girls were subjected to questions such as “why they stayed at the student-shared houses, went to the cinema, ordered food from online delivery service ‘Yemek Sepeti’” as well as “whether they prayed at home, read the Qur’an or had religious conversations”. Since the 15 July Coup Plot, it is already known that the indictments prepared on the basis of false evidence and assessments have been decided by judges under political pressure or acting with ideological motivation, and that these decisions have been used as justification for new operations. In this Underage Girls Case, the Court displayed a similar behaviour, releasing 11 of the 19 defendants, while deciding to continue the detention of 8 defendants without any valid reason. 

In this analysis, the ” Underage Girls Case”, which deals with the hate investigation and prosecution under the guise of the “fight against terrorism” targeting the efforts of innocent girls who are relatives of those dismissed from their jobs with emergency decrees (KHK) to cling to life, is analysed. The prosecution process of the case in question has not yet been completed and the next hearing has been postponed to the 2nd week of December. In the content of the analysis of the case, which will always be remembered as a “black stain” in the history of the country, the circular abuse of the “anti-terrorism legislation” as a weapon by the law enforcement, prosecution and judiciary under the instruction and coordination of the political power is explained: Law enforcement conducting hate operations on the basis of false evidence and irrational assessments, the allegedly false evidence and arbitrary assessments obtained within the scope of these operations forming the basis of the prosecutor’s indictment, court decisions being made on the grounds of the indictment, and these decisions being presented as “court decisions” in new and ongoing operations are explanations of such circular abuse.

The first part of the report analyses the method of the police to produce false evidence and evaluations, the second part analyses the preparation of the prosecutor’s indictment and the third part analyses the court’s decision-making process. Although the operation, investigation and prosecution process of the Underage Girls Case, which targeted girls who are relatives of those dismissed with emergency decree laws (KHK), is only one of tens of thousands of examples of hate operations and lawsuits, it stands before us as a very important example in terms of understanding the issue. The psychological and physical ill-treatment of girls and their families during the investigation and prosecution stages is only one dimension of the circular abuse.

 

 

PART ONE: HATE OPERATION BUILT ON FALSE EVIDENCE/EVALUATION

Law enforcement is the structure in charge of preventing criminals and crimes before they are committed, and after they are committed, catching the criminals and bringing them to justice together with the evidence of the crime. Law enforcement, which is divided into administrative and judicial branches, is organised in Turkey as the General Directorate of Security, Gendarmerie General Command, Coast Guard Command and General Directorate of Customs Enforcement. While the General Directorate of Security and its affiliated units are in charge in the urban area, the General Command of Gendarmerie and its affiliated units are in charge in rural areas. The Coast Guard Command and the General Directorate of Customs Enforcement and its affiliated units are, as their names suggest, in charge of coastal and customs areas. Although all law enforcement agencies have been authorised and assigned duties in the investigations and prosecutions targeting the Gülen Movement for almost the whole of last decade, the visibility and workload of the Police and Gendarmerie have been higher than the others, and these two law enforcement agencies and their affiliated units have come to the fore in terms of unlawful acts committed.

The 17-25 December Corruption Operations and the 15 July Conspiracy have gone down in history as important turning points in Turkey. In the first case, it was revealed how the political power that had ruled the country for ten years had become entangled in corruption, and in the second case, it was revealed how a political Islamist government legitimised every means to achieve its goals. During this period, the Erdoğan regime, its close circle and the deep structures that supported it poured concrete over the nearly century-old efforts of the Republic and modern democracy, and the regime made great efforts to infect the state institutions and the public opinion with its own evil. Law Enforcement has also had its share of this evil and has become an important part of the circular evil with its “hate operations”. With the changes made in the law enforcement bureaucracy after the aforementioned Corruption Operations, “obedience (to political power holders) replaced merit” and the unlawful demands of the political power were perceived as instructions by security bureaucrats who were willing to sign all kinds of wrongdoings. As such, the security forces carried out unlawful hate operations against a targeted group and tried to manipulate both the judicial mechanism and the public opinion with false evidence.

It is possible to understand the role of the police in the circular abuse of the counter-terrorism system even if we leave aside the efforts to produce false evidence and slander in the last 10 years and only look at the operation carried out in May 2024 against 48 people, including underage girls, with the allegation of “restructuring”. The details and absurdities regarding the abuse of the counter-terrorism system can be easily seen in the narratives of the victims, the statements of the prosecutor’s office/court and the references and evaluations of the security forces in the indictment. For example:

• The majority of those allegedly “attempting to overthrow the Republic of Turkey” were high school students under the age of 18 or university students in their twenties, and female students in their twenties were unlawfully arrested;
• It is understood that a “child dragged into crime” file was first opened against the children who were detained and subjected to ill-treatment by the police saying “we will make you vomit blood”, and then, due to public pressure, their “witness” statements were taken against their families(!);
• In the introduction of the 529-page indictment covering 41 persons, it was observed that forged documents were produced with reference to law enforcement agencies and claiming ‘restructuring’, and that these sloppy and disorganised documents were added to the indictment by copy-paste method;
• The police, who added physical surveillance and electronic wiretapping records of the target girls to the file, aimed to make the prosecution indictment more bulky with approximately 5 months of work that had no value in terms of quality;
• The police arbitrarily considered social activities and plans in the ordinary course of life, such as “university student girls getting together, staying in the same shared house, going in and out of the same house, playing bowling, ordering food or travelling abroad” as “terrorist acts” and ensured that they were included in the Prosecutor’s Indictment as “116 acts“.

One of the most important issues determining the position of the police in the counter-terrorism system is probably the “Briefing Notes” prepared by the central security units in Ankara, which are thrown into certain information databases. After the 2013 Corruption Operations, such arbitrary notes prepared by the combat(!) units, which were reorganised for the operations against the Gülen Movement and which mushroomed in many institutions of the state after the 15 July Conspiracy, are seen as the basis of the operations for the law enforcement. In the indictment of the High School Girls Case, the notes under the title “Current Structure” begin with “as a result of intelligence data that need confirmation(!) from reliable sources within the scope of the studies carried out to decipher the terrorist organisation…” and end with “based on the recent operations carried out throughout the country and information obtained from open sources”.

Indictment of the Underage Girls Case, page 42.

When the notes in question are analysed:

• “Sacrifice Group, Ghost Structuring, Serdengeçti[1] Group, Ibn-i Erkam[2] Group, Chief Exalted Group, Financiers, Dreamers” and other fabricated nomenclatures and sub-headings were used;
• Contradictory information such as “the individuals in the Ibn-i Erkam Group speak at least two languages, have international connections and have intensive foreign exit and entry activities”;
• Absurd information such as “organisational communication was provided through internet-based programmes such as WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, Signal, Skype, Tango, Opera VPN, FAMA GPS or games such as League of Legends”;
• It has been observed that fake content such as “The ‘Financiers’, who are selected among the prisoners/detainees in prison, obtain finance from the rich businessmen of the organisation outside or the ‘Dreamers’ spread the news that they see prophets in dreams etc. in order to keep those in prison alive, to prevent confession, to prevent dispersal” have been produced.

Such forged content produced by law enforcement agencies is accumulated in the pool of central organisations and shared with provincial organisations through Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMS). Such fake content shared by the central organisation in the form of “Information Transmission” forces the provincial units to carry out operations through an instruction/order/pressure mechanism, possibly through different communication channels. This conscious effort by law enforcement is the first link in the circular misuse of the fight against terrorism and constitutes the infrastructure for the prosecutor’s indictment and court decision in the following stages. The sharing of such information of questionable accuracy in the ruling media after the operation facilitates the manipulation of both the judicial mechanism and the public opinion.

 

 

PART TWO: PROSECUTION INDICTMENT BUILT ON A HATE OPERATION

The prosecutor’s office, which is one of the important elements of the justice mechanism, is included in the justice system to act as the prosecuting authority in criminal proceedings. The prosecutor’s office, which is authorised to initiate criminal proceedings on behalf of the public, is obliged to open an investigation as soon as it has information about the offence and, where necessary, to file a lawsuit. The prosecutor’s office is authorised to prepare an indictment when it concludes that a crime has been committed against suspects, and the prosecution process starts after the indictment is accepted by the relevant court. The indictment is important in terms of determining the limits of the proceedings, as the court’s limitation to the indictment plays a critical role in preventing arbitrariness in the judiciary.

Although the prosecutor’s indictment in criminal investigations is supported by sufficient legal regulations, the preparation of the indictment is subject to certain conditions for the proper functioning of the justice mechanism: The initiation of an offence/criminal investigation by the prosecutor’s office, the collection of evidence or the existence of sufficient suspicion are the bases for the opening of a public case. Therefore, it is considered arbitrary for the prosecutor’s office to initiate an investigation on the basis of suspicion that does not exist and to prepare an indictment on the grounds of acts that do not meet the definition of the offence specified in the legal regulations or elements that do not constitute evidence.

After the 2013 Corruption Operations, the political power launched a witch-hunt against members of the law enforcement and judiciary who did their job to protect democracy and the rule of law in Turkey. Members of the law enforcement and judiciary who did not side with the government or who did not turn a blind eye to the crimes of the government were first tagged, then dismissed, and in the process following the 15 July Conspiracy, dismissals, detentions and arrests began. The political power exerted heavy pressure on the targeted victims through the law enforcement and judiciary, which consisted of fully politicised individuals. In this context, law enforcement activities targeting approximately 2 million victims were transformed into unfounded indictments and criminal cases by prosecutors’ offices. Unsubstantiated information notes prepared by law enforcement, together with physical or electronic records of everyday behaviour, were thrown into common information pools with the characterisation of “terrorist organisation”, “membership of a terrorist organisation” or “terrorist act” and formed the basis of prosecution indictments.

The police operation carried out in Istanbul in May 2024 and the subsequent prosecutor’s indictment helped to understand the above-mentioned process in all its details. At the beginning of the indictment, a section titled “Fethullahist Armed Terrorist Organisation – Parallel State Structure” was included, citing the reports of the General Directorate of Security on the organisation and claiming that the Gülen Movement was described as “a pawn established to realise the strategic goals of global powers”. The allegation that the Movement is a “sui generis terrorist organisation” is attempted to be underlined by referring to political court decisions redesigned by the political power. Furthermore, some additional reports and statements such as “reorganisation” and “financing of terrorism” were added.

The Prosecutor’s Indictment in this case, which targets 41 people in total, includes “Articles 314/2 and 221/4 of the Turkish Penal Code, Articles 3, 5/1, 53/1, 58/9, 63/1 of the Anti-Terror Law and Article 325 of the Code of Criminal Procedure” in the referral article of the offence, and states that the evidence consists of “allegations, law enforcement investigations, the defence of the suspects, minutes and warrants written by the law enforcement, witness statements, denunciation records, law enforcement proceedings, tape and physical surveillance reports, criminal and civil registry records of the suspects and the entire file scope”. Within the scope of the investigation file in question, the allegations of the Law Enforcement Office and the Prosecutor’s Office consisted of “the opening of four student houses on the European side of Istanbul, the accommodation of female students in these houses, the organisation of a camping programme for students in Akören Village and the planning of a day trip to Bursa province”. During the investigation process initiated on the basis of these allegations, the law enforcement mobilised all its means and followed the girls, including those under the age of 18, for months, and finally identified 116 acts(!) and ensured that they were included in the Prosecutor’s Indictment.

Indictment of the Underage Girls Case page 8

When the Prosecutor’s Indictment is examined in detail, it is observed that information and evaluation notes prepared in advance by the Law Enforcement Unit were added to the file haphazardly, and arbitrary comments/evaluations were made in order to legitimise the investigation activities targeting innocent girls, It has been understood that in order to make the indictment in question look quantitatively coarse, the social behaviours of children in the ordinary course of life were tried to be presented as terrorist acts, and that technical surveillance information recording social behaviours that do not constitute a crime in any way was added to the file in detail, but in a preposterous way, in order to make a qualitatively empty indictment look quantitatively large. For example:   

• In the second section titled ‘Current Structuring of the FETÖ/PDY Armed Terrorist Organisation’, reference is made to the information notes left in the electronic information repository (EBYS) of the police by the TEM Department of the General Directorate of Security, and the ‘current structuring (sacrifice group, student structuring, serdengeçti, ibn-i erkam, ghost structuring, dreamers etc.)’ and subjective evaluations and fabricated information such as “organisational finance supply (marketer envelope, monthly salary envelope etc.)” or “organisational communication style (signal, viber, telegram, League of Legends game etc.)”;
• In the section titled “Prison Structure” added to the indictment, it is alleged that there is “a structure that includes prisoners and their families” and that this structure consists of “imams, lawyers, persuaders, victims’ representatives, prison responsibles, financiers, dreamers and jurists”. The indictment includes absurd allegations that push the limits of reason: “the jurists consisted of judges, prosecutors and lawyers who were in prison, the prison responsibles were in charge of provoking families on visiting days by saying ‘torture is going on inside, there is no food, no water’, and the dreamers were in charge of bringing news by saying that they ‘saw prophets and saints in their dreams’ in order to keep the prisoners’ hopes alive”;
• Social relations, communications and behaviours of the target victims, which are appropriate to daily life, were recorded by the law enforcement agencies under the name of electronic and physical surveillance and added to the indictment by the prosecutor’s office as “acts of terrorism”. For example, it was categorised under headings such as “Suspect X meeting/going home with suspect Y, going bowling or to cinema, phone call with GSM company, giving food parcels, programme held at the home of suspect X, buying/ordering furniture for the student house, exchanging money for house rent, meeting with Google Meet programme, planning a trip abroad/phone call, meeting at a café, getting passports, going to the beach with suspect X, phone call considered to be organisational(!)”. The recording of the social relations, behaviours and communications of university students who knew each other and stayed in the same house, using all technical means, under the name of “terror investigation” and transforming them into false evidence, was added to the indictment by the prosecution as if it was a “terrorist act”.

It is understood from a detail revealed during the court proceedings that the prosecution is not content with the copy-paste system in terms of its role in circular evil, but does/can do much more. Lawyer Lale Demirkazan X, one of the lawyers of the case, shared in her message that an accused student, who benefited from the effective remorse provisions by stating that “other students were advised to watch Gülen videos”, stated before the court that “she had never heard of such a thing… she rented the house herself, the lease agreement was made on her father’s name, she found other students on social media”, and that the student in question said or was made to say that in order to avoid arrest.

 

 

PART THREE: COURT JUDGEMENT BASED ON THE INDICTMENT

 

Courts are independent judicial bodies responsible for resolving disputes and conflicts between parties based on the principle of the rule of law. Usually structured to resemble a state institution, the court plays a role as the main actor in the interpretation and application of the law. What is referred to as judicial power in the principle of separation of powers in modern democracies corresponds to the work of the court. The independent exercise of judicial power by the court is directly related to the development of democracy and the existence of the rule of law in the country.

Since the proclamation of the Republic, Turkey has regulated the establishment, duties, powers, functioning and judicial procedures of independent and impartial courts. According to these regulations, the determination of the establishment and functioning of the courts, which are the guarantee of the rule of law as well as individual rights and freedoms, has been left to the legislative body, and the possible influence of the administration on the judicial mechanism has been prevented. In the same regulations, it has been stated that the courts are the sole competent authority in judging, seeking rights and access to justice, and it has been accepted that justice can only be established with the existence of a judicial mechanism that supervises the legislature and the executive. The impartial and independent exercise of judicial power on behalf of the nation, i.e. the rendering of judgement on behalf of the nation, is formalised by the “court decision” announced by the independent and impartial judge representing the court, becomes visible to the public and turns into instructions that the legislative and executive bodies must comply with.

The prosecutor’s office, which is in charge of conducting the investigation in criminal cases, is not a part of the court, but a part of the trial, as is the defence counsel. According to legal regulations, in a case to be tried in court, the judgement must be rendered only as a result of the triad of claim, defence and verdict. Only in this way is it possible to make a correct assessment of the indictment put forward by the prosecutor’s office, and justice can be established as a result of the independent and impartial decision of the judge, free from arbitrariness. The acceptance by judges of the indictments prepared by the law enforcement agencies, in which baseless, evidence-less and arbitrary information notes prepared by the law enforcement agencies are arranged one after the other with the copy-paste method, for political or ideological reasons casts a shadow on the independence and impartiality of the courts from the beginning.

The Turkish judiciary became a direct target of the political power after the Corruption Operations in December 2013, and a group of judges who were deemed not to fulfil the instructions of the regime were first labelled and then faced coercive interventions such as dismissal, detention and even arrest. In this period, which is recorded as the biggest massacre in the history of the Republic, the government built a judicial system that acts only on its own instructions. In this process, the legal system collapsed, courts ceased to be places where justice was served, and individuals and groups targeted by the political power were punished by the courts. After the 15 July conspiracy, preposterous indictments prepared behind closed doors with the cooperation of the law enforcement and prosecutor’s office under the control of the government have turned into court decisions with the instructions of the government. Innocent people, alleged to be members or sympathisers of the Gülen Movement, were tried not by judges but by the political power, and the courts turned into political venues where the rights of innocent people were usurped by the law.

When we look at the operation carried out in Istanbul in May 2024, the evidence put forward by the law enforcement and the indictment prepared by the prosecutor’s office, it is understood that the scene is not different from the scene that emerged after the 15 July Conspiracy. In a country where the legal and justice system is functioning properly, citing the 529-page indictment, all of which would be considered as “nonsense” in legal terms, as a justification, and especially evaluating the humanitarian behaviour listed under 116 headings as “terrorist acts” is not a decision that a normal court can take. It is clear that in a country where the law and justice system functions properly, the courts must act independently and impartially, free from arbitrariness, and only in this way can a fair trial be realised; otherwise, the court will also play a role in the circular abuse of the fight against terrorism.

The Underage Girls Case, which was heard in the last week of September, constituted a very interesting example of the circular evil mentioned above. During the trial in question, it was not the “terrorist(!) acts of a new(!) organisation established with the aim of overthrowing the constitutional order” that came to the fore, but the “routine of female students” that was the subject of the Law Enforcement Investigation and the Prosecution Indictment. In the courtroom, girls were asked about social activities such as studying, bowling or going to the cinema, as well as routine religious practices such as praying, breaking the fast, and reading the Qur’an. Lale Demirkazan, one of the lawyers in the case, shared in her X message that the accusations against A.Z., an 18-year-old student at Istanbul Law Faculty, were “staying in a student-shared house, going to the cinema at Perla Vista Shopping Mall and ordering food from Yemek Sepeti“. Another lawyer, Hatice Yıldız, stated that the most frequently used words in the courtroom were “Qur’an, prayer and juz (20-page sections in Qur’an)“, and wrote that the statement of one of the girls, “I did not think that the prayers I prayed would one day appear before me as a terrorist offence”, was entered into Segbis records in 2024 Turkey.   

 

The judge’s questioning on religious practices at the court stage of the case in question was not limited to the above. The presiding judge, on the grounds of the Prosecutor’s Indictment, asked the girls other strange questions such as “who asked the girls to recite 1,000 ihlas (a short chapter in Qur’an) on the day of Arafat (the day before Islamic feast days), or why they shared the messages of fitrah and charity“. What is understood from this is that the allegation of “attempting to overthrow the constitutional order” by the law enforcement and the prosecution could not and could not be proven, but the real purpose was a new attack process against the Gülen Movement under the name of “Restructuring”. In order to establish justice (!), the court asked young innocent girls to accept the labelling of “terrorist (!)” and to confess their “sins”, and therefore to accept the punishment that the circular evil in the triangle of police, prosecutor and judge would impose, if not for “attempting to subvert the constitutional order”. The five-day court process, from the law enforcement investigation to the prosecutor’s indictment, from the prosecutor’s indictment to the court judgement, showed that the Daughters’ Case was procedurally and substantively rubbish.

 

 

CONCLUSION

Circular Abuse of the Anti-Terrorism System in the Triangle of the Police, Prosecutors and Judges: The Case of Underage Girls is a study evaluating the systematic attack on the Gülen Movement, which came to light after the 17-25 December Corruption Operations and became commonplace after the 15 July Conspiracy. The report provides information on the transformation of efforts behind closed doors under the control of the political power first into law enforcement work, then into a prosecutor’s indictment and finally into a court decision, and finally into the circular abuse of the anti-terrorism system. The fact that forged evidence and assessments produced by the law enforcement agencies constitute the basis of the prosecutor’s indictment, that court decisions are made on the basis of the indictment, and that these decisions are presented as “court decisions” in new and follow-up operations shows in summary form how such circular abuse works.

The operation against girls in Istanbul in May 2024 is a very interesting example in terms of understanding the circular abuse of the anti-terrorism system. The operation carried out by law enforcement under the name of “fight against terrorism” was turned into a 529-page indictment by the prosecutor’s office and submitted to the relevant court. Eight people are currently under arrest within the scope of the operation, which characterises the behaviour, routines and communication patterns of innocent girls who are relatives of people dismissed from their jobs with emergency decree laws (KHK) as acts of terrorism. The operation against these girls is quite remarkable in terms of understanding the deplorable state of hatred in which the political power, the security forces and the prosecutor’s office are in. It is to be hoped that the court, which should also take into account the Yalçınkaya judgement of the European Court of Human Rights, will not be a part of the deplorable state of hatred, will follow the law and not political instructions, and will remind us of the rule of law with its independent and impartial judgement.

 

 

[1] a historical term to describe volunteer bouncers in the Ottoman army

[2] Al-Arqam ibn Abi al-Arqam was one of the early Muslims and companions of Prophet Muhammad. In his house, Muslims could practice their religion safely and secretly under pressure of their enemies at the time