Testimony dispute in IMM case: Defendants challenge prosecution statements

The trial of the IMM case, which includes Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu among its 414 defendants, 51 of whom are in custody, continued at the courtroom located within the Marmara Closed Prison complex in Silivri.

During the hearings held at the Istanbul 33rd High Criminal Court, defense statements and procedural objections by lawyers came to the fore. While some defendants challenged the conditions under which they gave their statements during the investigation phase, some lawyers also filed petitions with the court due to statements with similar content and the long hearing hours.

Testifying at the hearing, businessman Süleyman Çetinsaya stated that he was summoned to the Çağlayan Courthouse as a complainant during the investigation phase and gave his statement without a lawyer. Upon the reading of the section in his prosecution statement regarding his payment of 500 thousand dollars to Süleyman Atık, Çetinsaya said, “The prosecutor wrote this, put it in front of me, and I signed it. I did not read it. I do not deny my signature.”

Stating that he was told he would testify as a complainant, Çetinsaya expressed that he did not accept the accusations. “When they called me to the Çağlayan Courthouse, the prosecutor took my statement as a complainant. He told us he was taking it as a complainant,” said Çetinsaya, explaining that he did not have a lawyer with him.

Businessman Serbülend Danış, who is being tried without arrest, said he stood by the statements he gave to the prosecution regarding Baki and Bulut Aydöner. In response to Baki Aydöner’s question, “Can you prove that I am a mayoral advisor?”, Danış replied, “No, I cannot prove it. You introduced yourself that way.” Regarding Bulut Aydöner’s questions, he stated, “I was not subjected to any direct coercion by Bulut Aydöner.”

Statements made within the scope of “effective remorse” were also debated at the hearing. Detained defendant Murat Ongun alleged that some of the accounts of former IMM Advertising Management Manager Adem Tuncay were identical to the statements of Hakan Karaköse. Ongun argued that there were contradictions between Tuncay’s defense and his answers during the prosecution interrogation.

Rahşan Sertkaya, the lawyer for Gözdem Ongun, also drew attention to the similarities in the statements of company officials who came to the prosecution on the same day. Pointing out that the sentence “The money I sent to the company named Byzag Sanat Tasarım, which you asked me about, is within this scope” was repeated word-for-word in some statements, Sertkaya claimed that this was not a coincidence.

Former Anatolian Side Municipal Police Branch Manager Nazan Başelli stated that she was arrested on charges of “membership in an organization and bribery,” but that these crimes were not attributed to her in the indictment. Başelli asked, “If the reason for my arrest is membership in an organization and bribery, how can this not be written in the indictment?”

Başelli’s lawyer, Ali Durak, stated that an investigation had previously been conducted by the Istanbul Anatolian Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office regarding his client for the same act. Durak described the conduct of two separate investigations for the same incident as a “duplicate investigation.”

Regarding objections to the order of the hearing, long session durations were brought to the agenda. Ekrem İmamoğlu’s lawyer, Tora Pekin, citing an opinion received from the Turkish Medical Association, said that long hearing hours could have serious effects on health and requested that the court limit working hours.

It was reported that detained Medya A.Ş. General Manager Fatoş Pınar Türker fell ill during the hearing and was treated by medical teams in the courtroom. Türker’s lawyer stated that the detained defendants were brought to the courtroom early in the morning and that the hearings sometimes lasted until late at night, requesting that the sessions be concluded at reasonable hours.

In the session where the case was being followed, it was reported that Istanbul Deputy Suat Özçağdaş could not be in the courtroom on the grounds that Article 203 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CMK) had previously been applied to him. Özçağdaş requested that the decision be shown to him in writing; he then said he was leaving the courtroom out of respect for the families.

Minister of Justice Yılmaz Tunç, in his statement regarding the IMM investigation, argued that the allegations that statements were taken through pressure and threats during the investigation phase did not reflect the truth. Stating that the file is in the prosecution phase, Tunç said that the evaluation of evidence and the final discretion regarding the legal status of the defendants belong to the court.

Tunç also answered “Yes” to the question of whether there is any work on an additional indictment regarding the ongoing investigations into the IMM and İmamoğlu. The Minister stated that the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office is conducting work on new evidence, reports, and legal evaluations that could be the subject of an additional indictment.