A record that will go down in judicial history in the Ayhan Bora Kaplan case!..

The scandals in the “Bora Kaplan organized crime organization” file, which is presented as one of Turkey's largest mafia operations, show no signs of stopping.

As is known, it was revealed that the case's most important secret witness, codenamed “M7”, had fled abroad and that this had been concealed... “M7”, who revealed his identity, alleged that the police asked him to add the names of certain AKP members to his statement... It was rumored that the police officers conducting the investigation received 300 thousand dollars from Bora Kaplan's lawyers.

As a result, administrative and judicial investigations were launched against those police officers. As a result of these investigations, while some police chiefs and commissioners were arrested, the confessing Organized Crime Branch Manager was released under judicial control conditions.

HAS AN INVESTIGATION BEEN LAUNCHED INTO THE PROSECUTOR?

Yes, until today, only the police aspect of the process has been discussed. However, there were also aspects concerning the judiciary.

For example; it was alleged that the secret witness's statement was taken by the police and sent to the prosecutor, whereas it should have been taken by the prosecutor.

The first to voice this was the secret witness “M7”, Serdar Sertçelik. Subsequently, Ufuk Gültekin, one of the arrested commissioners, confirmed this in his statement as follows:

“The investigation prosecutor said, 'Take his statements and send them to me as an information note, I will take his statement.' Three officers in the Organized Crime Branch began writing down Sertçelik's statements. Later, they saved the text they prepared on my computer's desktop. They messaged me at 03:35 at night. 'The statement is finished, it is saved on your desktop.' I sent it to the prosecutor as a PDF in the morning.”

It has been learned that there has been a new development regarding this matter, and the Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSK) has launched an investigation into the investigation prosecutor.

COURT PRESIDENT-POLICE COOPERATION

Let us come to the court dimension of the process.

It was observed that Şevket Demircan, the Deputy Branch Manager of the Organized Crime Branch who conducted the investigation, met with both the fugitive codenamed “M7”, Serdar Sertçelik, and the President of the Ankara 32nd High Criminal Court, Mehmet Güven, who is presiding over the case, to obtain certain assurances for Sertçelik's return to the country.

It was understood that Sertçelik's flight on November 27 was reported to the Court in February, but the Court President did not upload the relevant letter from the Prosecutor's Office to the National Judiciary Informatics System (UYAP) due to an “inadvertent error by the clerk staff,” and therefore, while the defendants and their lawyers were unaware of Sertçelik's flight, the Court President directed questions to the defendants based on Sertçelik's statements.

It also emerged that the file's secret witness “Ü5” was heard in a special session without being reported to the defendants and their lawyers on the grounds that “his identity could be exposed.” The Court President, who later explained this situation, said that they could hear the secret witness “Ü5” again if the defendants and their lawyers had questions. However, after a while, this secret witness also retracted his statement, claiming it was “taken under duress and pressure.”

All of this aside; let us recount another event that will go down in judicial history.

The first part of the Bora Kaplan case was heard between April 15-26, and the second part between May 20-24.

In the session on Friday, April 19, Tansel Aktan, who is alleged to be Bora Kaplan's bodyguard, gave his defense. Explaining that he was the person in the bulletproof vest in the footage of Bora Kaplan with a Kalashnikov in front of the TRT building during the July 15 coup attempt, Aktan stated that there was an attempt to discredit Süleyman Soylu and that the struggle given on July 15 bothered some people. Regarding his bodyguarding, Aktan said, “I am a 65-kilo man. Am I in any condition to be a bodyguard?”

Three days later, in the session on Monday, April 22, the following occurred:

The Court President called Tansel Aktan back to the stand “due to necessity.” Meanwhile, Aktan's lawyer, who took the floor, asked, “After my client gave his defense on Friday, the Police Department submitted documents to the file. I did not see your request letter. Did you request it, or did the Police bring it on their own?”

The President replied, “We researched Tansel Aktan's social media accounts and requested it. The Police prepared a report accordingly. We identified some things; there are TikTok account posts.”

After these dialogues, the President showed the TikTok posts in question via video and asked Tansel Aktan various questions.

CLERKS WERE ON THE JOB

Let us come to the hearings held last week.

In the session on May 22, Tansel Aktan's lawyer brought this issue to the agenda once again and alleged that the identification regarding the TikTok accounts was made not by the Court, but by the Organized Crime Branch police and sent over.

Upon this, the Court President made the following statement the next day:

“After Tansel Aktan gave his first defense, we had the TikTok accounts brought in and took his defense on this matter as well. At that time, when his lawyer said that the Organized Crime Branch brought these accounts on their own without us requesting them, we stated that we requested them after our own findings. However, when he repeated this claim yesterday, we drew up a record. We added screenshots showing that I sent these accounts to Şevket Demircan from my own phone to the record. You can see them. In other words, the Organized Crime Branch is not acting on its own initiative.”

What do we understand from these statements?

The Court President, without feeling the need to write a formal request or anything, wrote directly to the Deputy Branch Manager of the Organized Crime Branch, Şevket Demircan, from his own WhatsApp and requested a transcript of the defendant's TikTok accounts. And he did what was necessary!..

When there were objections to this unprecedented procedure and speed, he drew up a record to prove how he communicated with the Organized Crime Branch and added screenshots of the WhatsApp correspondence to the record!..

Now let us read that record that entered the file. It is word for word as follows:

“After the defense of the defendant Tansel Aktan was taken at the hearing dated 19/04/2024, a lunch break was given, during which it was reported to the court panel by our court clerks O. A. and Y. Y. that the defendant Tansel Aktan had some videos and messages on the social media application called TikTok. It was deemed necessary to have them transcribed in order to ask the defendant about these messages, but since there was no opportunity to write a formal request to the Provincial Police Department due to the continuation of the hearing, the posts identified by the clerks and shown to the court panel were sent via the WhatsApp application to Police Chief Şevket Demircan, who serves in the Organized Crime Branch Directorate, and their urgent transcription was requested. In the hearing dated 22/04/2024, the transcribed posts were shown to the defendant Tansel Aktan and he was asked about them, and it was also stated to the defendant and his counsel at the hearing that these posts were identified by our court. However, since it was claimed by the counsel for the defendant Tansel Aktan at the hearing dated 22/05/2024 that these findings might have been identified not by our court but by the officers of the Organized Crime Branch Directorate, printouts of the phone screenshots of the messages containing the aforementioned posts sent by the court president to Police Chief Şevket Demircan were taken, and this record, which was drawn up to determine the situation, was added to the file.”

To summarize what happened; the court's clerks examined the defendant Tansel Aktan's TikTok accounts and reported them to the Court panel... It became necessary to ask the defendant about these... However, since the hearing was ongoing, there was no opportunity to write a formal request to the Police Department, so these posts identified by the clerks were sent to Şevket Demircan via the Court President's WhatsApp and their urgent transcription was requested!..

The clerks showed these findings to the Court panel, and they decided to request their transcription; shouldn't there be at least one member judge's signature at the bottom of the record?

No, there shouldn't. Whose signature is there, you ask? Only the two clerks and the Court President...

Where in our law does it exist to correspond directly with the police, who are a party to the investigation in a criminal case, to give them verbal instructions, to ensure that the police collect evidence against the defendant while the trial is ongoing, to conduct an official transaction via WhatsApp—instead of requesting it by writing a formal request to the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office—and for this to be considered a “document”; let those who know answer!..

Müyesser YILDIZ

May 29, 2024