The fate of trustees

Ekrem Dumanlı

The details of the intervention into Koza İpek Holding via trustees have become clear.

The strategy is obvious. First, let us remember the developments. The police raided the offices of one of Turkey's most successful conglomerates, Koza İpek Holding, and all of the accounts were scrutinized. As the allegations were refuted one by one, pro-government media outlets panicked. "The main purpose of the crackdown is to seize the holding's İpek Media Group, which owns critical media outlets," it was argued, but the ruling party and the pro-government media outlets were quick to strongly reject the claim. Why?

The reason is obvious: Article 30 of the Constitution states that press facilities cannot be confiscated. Thus, the government sought to bypass and avoid legal prohibitions and forcibly seize the İpek Media Group.

Two fraudulent acts occurred.

1. Efforts were made to find incriminating content in the holding's meticulously kept records. No such content could be found. The expert's report, prepared by a highly controversial figure, made the following justification for the assignment of trustees: "The organization, the people and the official documents obtained from them are apparently perfect. No organization in the world is capable of keeping its accounts and financial system in such perfect order." Absurd! From a legal perspective, it was totally absurd to confuse the mining company's account for its Himmetdede mine with "himmet" (donating money for religious purposes). If was a baseless accusation to take the economic term "Smurf village" at its face value and search for a real village. All of these acts can be treated only as gallows humor... But despite these funny accusations, they confiscated the holding and its media outlets, thereby committing a crime...

2. The second disastrous mistake was to confiscate the holding without calling it confiscation. Supposedly, what they did wasn't confiscation, but just an assignment of trustees. Why go with trustees instead of confiscation? This is because it is a crime under the Constitution to confiscate press organizations. Thus, they plan to say, "We haven't confiscated it; we just took over the management of the companies to manage them well." If you buy it, of course...

Several crimes were committed with this Eastern guile. Everyone involved in this conspiracy committed and continues to commit crimes. Sooner or later, the rule of law will return and the injustice done to the Koza İpek Holding will be tried...

What if certain newspapers and TV channels against which the same trustee formula is planned engage only in media activities? What if the trustee method cannot be used with regard to certain media outlets?

Let me put it more clearly: If a trustee is assigned to the Cumhuriyet, Zaman, Taraf or Sözcü dailies, or Samanyolu TV or other companies which exclusively deal in media activities, this is a clear breach of the Constitution. If any intervention is made into media companies which are not part of any holding and which conduct solely media activities, this will mean the cancellation of the entire legal system and at the same time, suicide for the judicial and security bureaucracy.

Thus, it is not a crime for media organizations to be part of a holding, and unlawful confiscation, such as by appointing a trustee, cannot be employed against them. However, using non-media companies as a means to control media outlets is a crime...

The only refuge for those with an unlawful mindset is to accuse media outlets of being terrorist organizations. This accusation is meaningless unless all legal processes are exhausted and a court decision is issued. From a legal perspective, a prosecutor referring to someone as a terrorist means nothing. Those who make such references before judicial processes are exhausted are actually terrorizing people.

Even if you seek to use this terrorism accusation as leverage to make media outlets submit to you, this does not give you the right to confiscate them or use trustees against them. In the past, the "deep state" targeted the newspapers it saw as the "mouthpieces of terrorist organizations" with bomb attacks, but it refrained from confiscating them or assigning trustees to them. This was because the perpetrators of bomb attacks could go missing, but the people behind confiscation or trustee operations are well known and they cannot escape litigation...

Published on Today's Zaman, 9 November 2015, Monday