MIDNIGHT EXPRESS OF AN INNOCENT WOMAN

Innocent Sevil Sevimli has been framed and thrown in Eskisehir, an infamous Midnight Express prison. Sevil Sevimli has been held for months, but she cannot send letters, because Eskisehir requires fifty Turkish Liras for each of her letters!



 Pretrial detention in Turkey is being used as a punishment without trial. Turkey abuses civil liberties under the pretense of shutting down terrorist organizations. Turkey's terrorism laws aren't being used against terrorists. They're used against innocent military officers, journalists, academics, defense lawyers, and ethnic Kurds accused in imaginary pseudoterrorist conspiracies. All charges are attacks on free speech. 

These freakish abuses are compounded by the routine manner in which disgusting Turkish judges agree to deny defendants bail. Many of the accused innocents have been in jail for years, some for a decade, as they await trial. This amounts to routine summary punishment of the presumed innocent. 

Sevimli, a French university student, was arrested on false charges of being a member of a terrorist organization in May, after she attended an Istanbul concert by the left-wing music group Grup Yorum on April 12 and participated in the May 1 celebrations.

Erdogan was locked for six months in prison for publicly reciting a verse declaring the mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets - words considered by a court to be incitement to religious militancy. Now taking his revenge, Erdogan has locked many thousands of Turks in prison!
1,000 innocent Turkish bloggers are in jails. 200 innocent Turkish journalists and publishers are in jails, one of the highest incarceration rates for members of the news media in the world. 300 innocent Turkish military officers are also behind bars, wrongfully charged in a series of pseudoplots to topple the government with names such as Ergenekon, Sledgehammer, and Action Plan Against Reactionary Forces. 

The freakish government of Greece is so stupid that it hoodwinked all media that I conspired to trigger a war between Greece and Turkey and blame Mariliza Xenogiannakopoulou, Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece, for it! Accusing dissident bloggers of treason, Graecokleptocrats have manufactured a blood libel in cyberspace, which in turn incites hatred and violence. The barbaric government of Greece gave my head on plate to Erdogan. Brutal Graecokleptocrats have destroyed my life. My life is stolen. Now I demand my life back! For those who are kind enough to contribute to my legal defense, please click the Donate button on the right column of venitism blogspot. http://venitism.blogspot.com

The cases against the officers have been marked by allegations of forged documents, detentions without evidence, and an attempt to subordinate the military not to the institutions of the state but to Erdogan himself. Although many Turks do not support the military's interference in the political system, they still see the legal proceedings against it as politically motivated. In that, they are correct: The downfall of the officers is the culmination of a highly undemocratic campaign to intimidate, harrass, and imprison Erdogan's opponents.

All suspect cases have been cooked up, with public opinion shaped by leaks to newspapers like Taraf and Zaman, closely tied to the Islamic movement. Too much of the evidence is doubtful to believe the investigations are aimed at further democratization.

Prosecutors are hounding certain groups and individuals for political gain. The aggressive way in which these investigations are carried out shows the existence of a secret agenda or a hidden motive behind these operations against the army, intellectuals, academics, journalists.

These cases have had a devastating impact on the morale of officers, and their focus if these cases are ever dropped will be trying to restore the morale of the officers rather than seeking to take revenge.

Sevimli cannot write letters to her friends in France because the prison is asking for fifty liras per letter, in order for a translator to read and check them! Unlucky Sevimli came to Turkey from France to study as part of the Erasmus program months ago, and has been under arrest since May 9.

Pianist Fazil Say is an internationally acclaimed Turkish artist. He had to pay damages for insulting Muslim religious values on Twitter. Critics call him a traitor to the nation. 

Many Turks quote Persian poet Omar Khayyam: You say that there are rivers of wine. Does that mean it is a heavenly bar? You say two virgins will be given to every believer. Does that mean it is a heavenly brothel?

Say was one of the two hundred Twitter users to circulate the Khayyam quote, but he is the only one to face a trial for posing a risk to public order. Selective persecution is just a political tool. http://venitism.blogspot.com

Author and Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk had to pay damages after he openly criticized the genocide of Armenians. Elif Shafak alos paid damages for broaching the same topic in her book, The bastard of Istanbul. Nedim Guersel, author of the novel Allah's Daughters, had to pay damages for blasphemy.

Media that criticize Erdogan have found themselves in financial trouble due to punitive fines and tax investigations. After the leading newspaper Hurriyet connected Erdogan to a charity scandal, the state fined the publication's corporate owner, the Dogan Group, $523 million for tax evasion, and then fined it again seven months later for $2.5 billion in unpaid taxes and other unspecified irregularities, putting the total amount owed higher than the value of the company itself. The campaign served as a warning to other media not to criticize Erdogan, and, alongside arrests and firings of unfriendly journalists, it has created a climate of fear.

Erdogan has limited the ability of ordinary Turks to question his power. The anxiety produced by Erdogan's actions against journalists, the military, and politicians has produced a high degree of self-censorship. Erdogan has empowered special security courts to arrest citizens on suspicion of terrorism without evidence or any right to a hearing and has used judicial indictments to target those calling for greater autonomy for the Kurds. Erdogan has virtually taken over the Turkish Academy of Sciences, once a bastion of Kemalist orthodoxy. 

There are currently over 25,000 pending complaints against Turkey in the European Court of Human Rights concerning violations of various political and personal freedoms, compared with about 3,000 for the United Kingdom and 2,500 for France and Germany.