Surprising reaction from the presiding judge to Erdoğan's video

Müyesser Yıldız - 12punto.com.tr

In today's session of the Akıncı Air Base trial, which is being retried after the Court of Cassation overturned the verdicts for some defendants, electronics engineer Harun Biniş, who is identified as a civilian imam, continued his defense that he began the day before.

In his defense the previous day, he argued that the July 15 footage was edited and requested that it be sent to the Forensic Medicine Institute to determine whether it was doctored, stating:

“Why are these things being done? Just like in Ergenekon and Balyoz, power corrupts people and makes them say, ‘Nothing will happen to me.’ The judges in question had thought the same about digital evidence. Now, it is known what they have become.”

In today's session of the trial, held by the Ankara 4th High Criminal Court at the Sincan Prison complex, Harun Biniş claimed that the period referred to as the “Century of Turkey” is a copy of the tyranny of the Roman era from a thousand years ago. While stating that more than 2 million people were victimized by statutory decrees (KHK), Biniş used the phrase “KHK is a crime of genocide.” Recalling the defendants who were not released despite being ill during the first trial period and subsequently lost their lives, Biniş referred to the former presiding judge and current Court of Cassation member Selfet Giray, saying, “He has become a murderer.”

While responding to the terms “two-faced” and “double-tongued” used against him by Erdoğan’s lawyer Hüseyin Aydın, Harun Biniş played a video regarding Erdoğan’s differing statements on certain issues. However, the presiding judge did not allow the video to continue, saying, “There is no point in showing these images. We are not obligated to watch the opinions of politicians. You keep picking at that scab.”

When Biniş began to relay the comments of foreign experts and organizations, primarily Graham Fuller and Michael Rubin, regarding July 15, the judge reacted by saying, “Now we are watching foreign news. There is no need to drag this out.”

In the continuation of his defense, Harun Biniş claimed that the radio and telephone recordings from July 15 were edited, tampered with, and reproduced, saying, “These were applied in small-scale examples in Ergenekon and Balyoz. Give me voice editing software, and I will make it look like you made these speeches.”

Biniş also voiced the following claim:

“It is understood that those who carried out these edits have a pool of conversations obtained through legal/illegal means from the radio, telephone, and internet wiretaps of the defendants. As a result, it fell to the defendants to be surprised and say, ‘I did not make this speech,’ and to those who did this to rub their hands together and call it a ‘gift from God.’”

News Source: Müyesser Yıldız