Sep 9, 2014

On Sept. 9, an Istanbul court approved an indictment requesting “aggravated life imprisonment” for 35 soccer fans who support Besiktas, Turkey’s oldest soccer team, and who call themselves the Carsi group (the Bazaar group, in English). Their alleged crime does not, however, involve sports, but the Gezi Park protests they joined in July 2013. Prosecutors argued that the protests were not an ordinary affair, but a “coup attempt” as criminalized by the Turkish Penal Code in Article 312: “Any person who attempts to dissolve [the] Government of [the] Turkish Republic, or [takes advantage of the government while it is under threat] is punished with … life imprisonment.”

How could a bunch of protesters, who had no weapons, dissolve the government of Turkey? The prosecutors noted that a gun and some bullets had been found in one of the suspect’s homes. There was no evidence, however, that the gun had been used during the Gezi protests. A prosecutor noted that the protesters had marched toward the prime minister’s office in Besiktas, in Istanbul, possibly with the intent of storming it. More tellingly, the indictment stated the following: “It has been observed that the suspects tried to bring the world’s attention, especially that of the foreign media, to the events, to create an image similar to the Arab Spring, with the aim of ousting the legal Turkish government by illegal means.”

So, the prosecutors used the following reasoning: The Arab Spring toppled governments in the Arab world. Turkey’s protesters tried to make events look like the Arab Spring. So, they are guilty of trying to topple the Turkish government. There is a small problem with this reasoning: The very Turkish government in question supported the Arab Spring, most notably in Syria, arguing that it is the people's right to hold popular demonstrations with the aim of forcing governments to resign. Therefore, according to the prosecutors’ logic, something that is a right in the Arab world is a crime in Turkey and deserves life imprisonment.

Much of the indictment is full of accusations stemming from the presumption of a coup attempt. For example, one of the suspects is said to have paid for the pizzas and meatballs that his fellow protesters ate during the events, proving his participation in the “coup.” Wiretapped communications among the protesters about how to resist the police were also presented as evidence.

On one issue, the prosecutors seem to have a point: Some of the Gezi Park protesters, including members of the Carsi group, were really willing to storm the prime minister’s office, and perhaps his apartment in Ankara as well. They were prevented from doing so and dispersed by the police. Had they succeeded, then they certainly would have been guilty of vandalism. Other acts of vandalism, such as the burning of police cars, repeatedly occurred during the protests, along with throwing rocks at the police.