The request for the release of Prof Büşra Ersanlı was dismissed by a court in Istanbul on Thursday (17 November). Academic Ersanlı, member of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) Party Assembly (PM), was arrested on 1 November in the context of the investigation into the Union of Kurdistan Communities (KCK), an organization that is formally chaired by Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned leader of the militant outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
"Investigation files were merged"
Lawyer Hülya Gülbahar, one of Ersanlı's joint attorneys, assessed the procedures in a statement made to bianet. She said that a total of 37 people were arrested on 7 October. Their files were merged with the investigation about 44 people who were arrested on 1 Novmeber, among them Büşra Ersanlı and publisher Ragıp Zarakolu.
Gülbahar said they were currently facing a police and judiciary operation that was carried out within the framework of certain lists passed to the judiciary by the political power. She claimed that the judiciary was applying this scenario step by step just as it had been designed beforehand.
Ersanlı: How can certain people remain silent on this?
Lawyer Gülbahar visited Prof Ersanlı at the Bakırköy Women and Juvenile Prison and said that her mental and physical condition was good.
She reported that the latest experiences did not cause her despair. However, the lawyer also said that Ersanlı did not understand how the people she lectured together with at various universities, including people from the conservative wing, and also the people she held speeches together with at several panel discussions could remain silent on the recent incidents.
Lawyers complain about prosecutor and judges
At the same time, the joint attorneys of a total of 147 people detained in the scope of KCK operations in Istanbul, including Ersanlı and Zarakolu, filed complaints about Judges Mesut Özcan and Alparslan Oğuz who gave the decision for arrest, Judge Kazım Kahyaoğlu who is responsible for the decision of restriction and about Prosecutor Adnan Çimen who is carrying out the investigation.
As reported by Radikal newspaper, lawyer Mahmut Taşçı said in a statement made to journalists on behalf of the joint attorneys in front of the Istanbul Courthouse on Wednesday (16 November), "The government that is attacking the BDP showed that they do not recognize the right to make politics on legal grounds for Kurds".
Taşçı said that the defendants were kept in police custody for several days where they became so tired that they were almost not able to give their statements at court later on. He indicated that no security of the law had remained. (EKN)
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