Selek Case a Travesty For Turkish Judiciary
Cengiz Candar describes the case and conviction of Pinar Selek as a low point for the Turkish judicial system.
The Dreyfus case, which went down in history as one of the most notorious examples of judicial miscarriage, may seem like a joke compared to the judicial scandal that has rocked Turkey.
The story of the trial, known as the Pınar Selek case, easily dwarfs the Dreyfus case in comparison.
On July 9, 1998, an explosion in the Egyptian Bazaar, a small replica of the famous Khan al-Khalili Bazaar in Cairo, killed seven people and injured 127. Those were the days of the military-tutelage regime that carried out a "remote-control military coup," otherwise wise known in Turkey as "the postmodern coup," and severely persecuted its opponents. The country was going through one of the bloodiest episodes of the Kurdish conflict in those days. The investigation of the incident eventually reached Pınar Selek, a young sociologist who had begun to acquire fans from the marginal sections of society with her contrarian actions.
Pınar Selek was charged as one of the perpetrators behind the explosion, based on a statement given by a Kurdish suspect who was accused of having connections with the PKK. It was eventually revealed that his deposition was taken under torture. But oddly, that same person who was detained as the main perpetrator of the incident later said that he didn't know Pınar Selek and that he was forced by torture to give her name. He was not convicted.
