Is the brother of the President's son-in-law above the law?

The AKP, which came to power about 22 years ago with the slogan "We will end bans, corruption, and poverty," has no rival when it comes to doing the exact opposite of its promises.

We are heading toward a world championship in corruption and the black money sector.

We have fallen behind even some African countries in the poverty rankings. As of this month, every four-person household with an income below 67 thousand liras per month is considered poor by global standards.

As for the bans…

The AKP has indeed kept some of the promises it made on this subject.

For example, it ended the headscarf ban. Now we have soldiers with headscarves, police officers with headscarves, ministers with headscarves, members of parliament with headscarves, and teachers with headscarves.

But for some reason, our women cannot enter courthouses, the Parliament, hospitals, schools, or government offices wearing skirts above the knee. The headscarf is free, but short sleeves or spaghetti-strap blouses are banned, even for students... If they insist, they are not allowed into graduation ceremonies!

Among the bans the government has lifted are those that were observed for 70 years in accordance with the revolution laws…

Although it is still prohibited according to our constitution, religious sects are now everywhere…

Sheikhs are free, religious leaders are free, shrines and dervish lodges are free; but it is forbidden for civil servants to be members of the Atatürkist Thought Association or the Association for Supporting Contemporary Living!

All city squares are free for religious protesters; they are forbidden for workers and women.

Criticizing the current president is forbidden; insulting the founding President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is free…

For example, TikTok, where thousands of videos full of insults and profanity against Mustafa Kemal Atatürk are in circulation, is free, but access to Instagram, which appeals to a more elite segment, is banned…

Now the gaming platform Roblox is also banned…

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A ban has also come to the Medyaradar website, which has been broadcasting for 18 years.

It is not even a ban; the site has been officially shut down…

So why?

The answer to this question is in the statement made by Medyaradar officials yesterday:

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"We do not have holdings or giant companies behind us…

We do not have foreign partners or sponsors who interfere in everything…

We are independent journalists who have dedicated ourselves to the fundamental principles and ethical values of the journalism profession and have devoted our lives to enabling people to exercise their right and freedom to receive information.

For exactly 18 years, we have drawn our strength from our honesty and the ethical values of our profession.

To this day, regardless of whether our subjects were powerful or powerless, we have delivered every piece of information that had news value to you.

We did not shy away from anything.

Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed against us, mostly aimed at “intimidating and silencing” us; we won 90 percent of them.

Of course, we have made mistakes from time to time over all these years; we knew how to apologize and correct the news or commentary we wrote.

However, we never wrote news or commentary just to harm someone.

We did not use our profession as a tool for our personal fights.

We did not throw mud at anyone; we avoided slander, insults, and profanity.

We focused only on news and information-based commentary.

Now we are facing a great injustice that we do not deserve, and that is why, for the first time in our history, we felt the need to explain the injustice and lawlessness we are experiencing to you, our readers.

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As you know; your site, Medyaradar, was blocked from access a week ago by the Turkuvaz Media Group, whose Executive Board Chairman is Serhat Albayrak, the brother of President Erdoğan's son-in-law, Berat Albayrak.

The justification is quite interesting:

A news item appeared on Medyaradar on June 23, 2024, along with some other websites.

Was this news titled “Turkuvaz Media Group’s YouTube channels were hacked” true?

Yes…

Was it real?

Yes…

Despite this, a decision was made on June 27 to block access to the news. The Medyaradar management complied with the law and implemented this decision immediately.

More than a month later, on July 30, Turkuvaz Media lawyers applied to the court. They claimed that they could not reach us and could not get the access blocking decision implemented, even though the names, email addresses, and phone numbers of our Editor-in-Chief, News Center editor, and Legal Counsel were on our site's masthead.

They requested that a decision be made for the “complete shutdown of the site” on these grounds.

In other words, the lawyers made a request based on a false statement.

The legal scandal we faced did not end there; the judge who was to make the decision did not even feel the need to check on their computer whether the link to the news was blocked from access.

They did not even have the news link that was the subject of the access block written into their unfair and unlawful decision.

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Professional organizations, led by the TGC (Turkish Journalists Association), and media outlets reacted to the decision taken on July 30.

Upon the decision, Medyaradar lawyers took action.

They informed the higher court and the Access Providers Association that the news item cited as the reason for the site's closure had been removed immediately, i.e., on June 27, that the closure of the site was unlawful, and that according to Article 7 mentioned in the judge's decision (If the content subject to the access block has been removed from publication, the judge's decision automatically becomes void), the site should be reopened for access.

However, the higher court, just like the court that made the decision, signed off on a new act of lawlessness and rejected the objection."

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The summary of the event is this:

The brother of the President's son-in-law made the courts violate the law!

By portraying a complied-with decision as if it had not been complied with, he had a website shut down.

The site managers end their “manifesto” from yesterday with this sentence:

“As Medyaradar, we are fighting for a Turkey where justice is strong but never turns into a toy in the hands of the powerful, and we want to see all our friends and colleagues by our side in this struggle.”

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I am sure my site, 12 Punto, is of the same opinion; as a journalist of 43 years, I state that this injustice done to Medyaradar, which has published many news items for or against me to this day, must be ended immediately, and I condemn the owners and managers of Turkuvaz Media, who have gone down in history by having a media organization shut down while being in the media sector themselves!