KEMAL TÜRKLER MURDER TRIAL CLOSED BY PRESCRIPTION
KEMAL TÜRKLER MURDER TRIAL CLOSED BY PRESCRIPTION
The trial related to the murder of Kemal Türkler, the founder president of DİSK was closed by prescription after 26 years. Türkler was the key figure of the trade UNION movement in Turkey in the 1970s. He was assassinated in front of his house in Istanbul on 1980, July 22.
Defendant Ünal Osmanağaoğlu could not be brought to the court on the ground of medical reports and lack of budget for transportation. Hence, the trial had been continuously postponed to a later date. Bakırköy the 2nd High Criminal Court decided to apply the status of prescription and DROPped procedures on 2010, December 1.
DİSK President Süleyman Çelebi made an announcement after the hearing. He stated that “the murders of this trial were known” and “related documents had been intentionally concealed”. Çelebi criticized that also the state of prescription had been deliberately made use of for this case. “As far as we are concerned, the defendant is the murderer, he is the person who killed Kemal Türkler. It was confirmed in the official record by the court twice. “
Commenting on the status of prescription, Çelebi indicated that “this decision will not clear away the perpetrator’s identity as a murderer”. He said that DİSK was going to apply to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). “From our point of view, it was not an acquittal. We will follow this case until it is ended”, Çelebi claimed.
Ergin Cinmen, joint attorney of the Türkler family,also criticized the decision: “For years and years the state took efforts to exempt the culprits from penalty. The entire system is the perpetrator First it was the police forces that did not arrest the murderer and later the judiciary did not punish him. All the political murders committed during the 1980 military coup and afterwards remained unpunished. The state has always protected the suspects. We will bring this case before the Court of Appeals. If the decision is uphold, we will take the case to the ECHR”.
Türkler’s daughter Nilgün Soydan was an eye-witness of her father’s assassination when she was 18 years old. “First the state killed my father, then they protected the person who killed my father for years and eventually they looked into our eyes and told us that the case reached its status of prescription. I will not worry about the application to the ECHR. You are even afraid of my father’s grave. Keep being afraid of my father. History will take the state to account for the murder”.
(bianet.org)
