On July 24, police officer Muhittin Zenit filed a lawsuit for damages against bianet.org for reporting the telephone conversation between Zenit and Erhan Tuncel about Hrant Dink’s murder. Tuncel is on trial for instigating the murder of Hrant Dink. Zenit appears in these news reports as telling Tuncel during a phone conversation that “What, they shot him from the head…This is the only difference. He was not going to run away, but this one did.” Zenit is suing bianet.org for the news reports appeared on the site on September 30, 2007 under the title “Vurulacak Şekil Belliydi” (How he was going to be shot was known) and on April 28, 2008 under the title “Dink Cinayetinde Yeni Kanıt: Muhsin Başkan’la Yasin Konusunda Görüşeceğiz” (New evidence in Dink’s murder: We will converse with President Muhsin about Yasin). The amount Zenit is asking for damages is 25000 YTL (about 12500 Euro). The case will be held at Ankara’s 25th Civil Court of First Instance on November 12. Zenit is suing the NTV, one of the major television channels in Turkey, and asking for 90000 YTL (about 45000 euro) in damages. The case will be heard by Ankara’s 1st Civil Court of First Instance in October.

On July 25, Istanbul’s 13th High Criminal Court accepted the Ergenekon indictment. Thus, the case with 86 suspects, of whom 47 are arrested, will be held on October 20.

On July 21, the Criminal Court of First Instance of Tunceli province acquitted Hüseyin Tunç, head of the Tunceli province for the Labor Party (EMEP), of the charge of “praising the crime and the criminal” in the case for hanging the pictures of  Deniz Gezmiş, Yusuf Aslan and Hüseyin İnan, revolutionaries of the 60s and 70s, on the window of the party headquarters. Likewise, in Tunceli, Gökhan Türkan, Sancar Yamaç and Zekai Sarıca were prosecuted for the same accusation previously and acquitted of the charges on March 12, 2008.  

On July 23, columnist Ergun Babahan of daily Sabah was acquitted in the case in which he was on trial for writing that the 9^th President of Turkey, Süleyman Demirel was also responsible for the hanging of Deniz Gezmiş and his friends, revolutionaries of the 60’s and 70’s. He was accused of insulting Demirel, facing prison sentence of four months. Babahan’s lawyer Banu Yılmaz thinks that the verdict will be appealed both by the prosecutor and Demirel’s lawyers, but she still believes that it is a positive development for the freedom of expression.

The prosecution in Sarköy (province of Tekirdag in Thrace) demanded ten year prison sentence for journalist Yakup Önal of the local "Şarköy'ün Sesi" ("The Voice of Şarköy) newspaper for insulting mayor Can Gürsoy of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and two municipal council members, Olcay Yücel and Ercan Yücel. The newspaper had started a series called "President Pinocchio and the nine dwarves" on 20 July 2005. The story started, "Once upon a time...in a country, there was a president called Pinocchio in a coastal town called Sarki. Pinocchio had nine dwarves who approved all of his decisions like a suction pump."

A lawsuit was filed against chief editor of daily Star Mustafa Karaalioğlu for criticizing the decision of the Constitutional Court to annul the amendment that allowed wearing headscarf in universities. The prosecutor is asking for 14.5 year jail sentence. Karaalioğlu, who penned on the June 6, 2008 an article titled “The End Of The Words, The Agreement Is Over”, will be tried for “Provoking people to hatred and hostility or denigration”, “Insulting public servants as a group”, “Provoking people to commit crime.” In his article, Karaalioğlu says, “The Constitutional Court went over its jurisdiction when it annulled the constitutional amendment designed to end a rights violation so that young girls can receive a university education. It ran over not only the law, but the religiosity of the society and a value that is the heritage of a belief going back hundreds of years.”

The mental anguish damages case filed by the 312 generals, including the heads of the four branches of the armed forces, against the newspaper Vakit and Mehmet Doğan, former member of the High Council of the Radio and Television, is continuing after the annulling decision of the Supreme Court of Appeals. The trial at the 20^th Criminal Court of Peace was postponed to November 13 to wait for the lawyers of suspects Nuri Aykon and Mehmet Doğan to present heir arguments against the expert reports. The court is trying to determine if the said communication was sent to the newspaper by Mehmet Doğan’s IP address, since the Supreme Court of Appeals had reversed the decision for this reason.   

Writer Naif Karabatak from Adıyaman is on trial for his article that appeared in newspaper Güne Bakış on February 28, 2008, in which he argued, against the decision of the Constitutional Court, for the right of the young women to wear headscarf. He is facing a jail sentence. Writer Karabatak, who is on trial for his “Where are the prosecutors?” article, will face the judge again on November 27. The lawsuit was filed upon Adıyaman University Rector Prof. Dr. Mustafa Gündüz’s complaint. In the previous hearing on May 13, Karabatak rejected the accusations by claiming that the sentences in the indictments were not his, different sentences were made with the words he used. He also objected the trial itself by claiming that Prosecutor Kerem Uçkan did not have the right to launch an investigation.

Weekly comic magazine Leman and owner Mehmet Çağçağ are on trial for putting on Leman’s cover on February 6, 2008 Prime Minister’s words “We did not take West’s science, but its immorality”. They are facing a compensation payment of 10000 euro. The next hearing will be on October 14.

Ersen Korkmaz, owner of the local newspaper Demokrat İskenderun, and Necmettin Salaz, head of the İskenderun district for the Turkish Communist Party (TKP), are on trial for publishing the speech Salaz made on September 2002 under the title “Kürtlerin Önderi Alındı Faşistlere Teslim edildi” (The leader of the Kurds was taken and delivered to the fascists”. They are accused of “denigrating the military of the state”. The court is waiting for the decipherment of the CDs sent from the local Güneş TV. The next hearing will be on December 26. 

Abdurrahman Dilipak, newspaper columnist for “Anadolu’da Vakit” was sued for his article “Cübbe Sarık” (Cloak Turban), published on February 13, 2008. He is accused of “denigrating the armed forces through media.” The case was filed following a complaint made by the General Staff to the Ministry of Interior on February 18, which asked that the journalist be punished according to article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. On September 17, Dilipak will face the judge at the Bakırköy Court of First Instance. In the meantime, the court is waiting for Interior Minister’s permission to be able to try the case. The article said, “They might place a white turban wrapped over a green fez instead of their officer’s hat somewhere visible in their houses… Let us remember how the Red Army disappeared over one night…The society in Turkey is scared and controlled through briefings, unsolved murders and files on people…There have been covert action to stir the country, in the east through JİTEM and in the west through non-governmental organizations…The leader of the patriots is accused of his expression “We had four thousand soldiers walk in their civilian clothes and nobody realized it.”

The 2^nd Criminal Court of First Instance of Silivri will continue trying Hakan Taştan and Turan Topal on November 4 for “denigrating Turkishness”, “provocation of hatred and hostility” and “gathering data illegally” in the case of spreading the Protestant belief. On June 24, the court sent the part of the file connected with the charge of “denigrating Turkishness” to the Ministry of Justice to receive permission for the trial. The witnesses A.K.K. and E.D., who were called in by the complainant, said it was their first time seeing the accused. The lawyers told the court that the witnesses were pressured into giving this testimony. 

It was argued in the telephone tip to the gendarmerie that Silivri was going to be turned into a Christian holy place by making out a case using some of the historical places, there was work in the schools in this direction, speeches denigrating Turkishness, the military service and Islam were being made. The indictment stated that the accused who were members of the Turkish Protestant Church in Taksim had been doing missionary work and handing out the Bible, books and CDs explaining the Christian religion to people who had been mostly students. 

Şevket Demir, a representative of the local newspaper Birecik’in Sesi of the province of Gaziantep, is on trial for writing about the bad treatment allegation in connection with the police under the title “Polis misin, Yoksa Ağa mısın?” (Are you a police or Agha (feudal landowner) in his column? Charged with insulting, Demir is facing an indemnity of 7500 euro. The next hearing will be on October 24. The police who filed the case claims that Demir said “Hey, where is your superior” and continued by asking him how old he was, where his superior was after he told Demir to introduce himself first.  

In the suit for damages filed against eighty three year old writer Fikret Otyam by Antalya’s Chief of Police Feyzullah Arslan, the witnesses of the accused will be heard. Otyam is on trial for criticizing Arslan for ignoring the traffic problems in the city. The writer and the director in-charge of the local magazine Son Nokta, İdris Özyol, are facingcompensation payment of 10 thousand euro. Otyam said that he had had no intention of insulting anyone, he had written his article only to draw attention to the people who die or to become permanently incapacitated in the traffic accidents.

The 2^nd Criminal Court of First Instance of Şişli, Istanbul will continue trying Mehmet Sami Belek, owner of the newspaper Günlük Evrensel, and İsmail Muzaffer Özyurt for the article titled “Batman TPAO’da Eylem” (Activity at Batman’s Turkish Petroleum Company) on December 24. They are accused of “publishing the comments of the terrorist organization.”

The case in which Rojda Kızgın, a reporter of the Dicle News Agency (DİHA), Rıdvan Kızgın, former head of the Bingöl branch of the Human Rights Association (İHD), and Doğan Adıbelli, the person who made claim, are on trial for the article titled “Village guardians are fishing with the bombs made by the state” was held on September 11. The accused are being prosecuted under article 301. Therefore, the Criminal Court of First Instance of Bingöl is still waiting for the permission of the Ministry of Justice. The three people are accused of “denigrating publicly the state of the Turkish Republic, the military and the police organization of the state”. Servet Özen, lawyer of the accused, had criticized that the case about the village guardians had been filed under article 301. DİHA reporter Kızgın had published the allegations of a peasant who had applied to İHD’s Bingöl branch and Rıdvan Kızgın’s comments. 

Reporters Ahmet Şık Banu Uzpeder of weekly Nokta are on trial under article 301 for the interview done at the anniversary of the “Back to Life” operations. The prosecution was launched for the interview “Bayrampaşa’da O gün” (That day in the Bayrampaşa Prison) don with Münevver Köz who had managed to get out alive from the C1 women’s cell in the Bayrampaşa Prison. The 2^nd Criminal Court of First Instance of Bakırköy, Istanbul sent the case file to the Ministry of Justice upon the request of reporters’ lawyer Fikret İlkiz.

After losing their son Baran Tursun to a police bullet, the three members of the Tursun family are now charged, in two separate cases, with violating the newly revised Article 301 for their condemnation of the trial procedure. Baran Tursun was shot for not complying with a stop warning while driving. When the court released accused police officer Atar on January 14, the Tursun Family’s reaction outside the courthouse in Karşıyaka was highly vocal, leading to their being sued for insulting the institutions and organs of the Turkish state under article 301.The father Mehmet Tursun’s explanations during the trial of the police officer Oral Emre Atar at the 1st High Criminal Court of Karşıyaka in the province of Izmir brought him the accusations of “obstructing the trial process” (TCK 277), “openly denigrating the judicial organs and the police organization” (TCK 301) and making “death threats” at three police officers.  Complying with the new version of article 301, which went into effect on May 8, Karşıyaka’s 3^rd Criminal Court of First Instance in Izmir decided to send the case file for Mehmet Tursun, Berna Tursun and Şelale Tursun, victims father, mother and sister, respectively, to the Ministry of Justice. The Tursun Family is also accused of threatening the police officers who are on trial at the 1^st High Criminal Court of Karşıyaka, Izmir.  

The 11^th High Criminal Court of Ankara will continue prosecuting Mehmet Kutluer, license holder of the newspaper Yeni Asya, who was sentenced to prison for two yeas one day for describing earthquakes as “divine warning” during the 39^th commemoration of an renowned religious figure Said-i Nursi. As the 8^th Penal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals bozduğundan the verdict regarding the journalist, Kutluar’s prosecution had re-started on August 26. The next hearing will be on November 20. Kutluer’s lawyers demanded from the court to rule for lack of jurisdiction in order to transfer the case to the Criminal Court of First Instance and consider the decision of the European Court of Human Rights. 

Kilis 2nd Court of First Instance sent Kıyasettin Aslan’s file to the Ministry of Justice in accordance with the revised article 301 of the Turkish Penal Law (TCK). The union member Aslan has been on trial for his article titled “Mayın” (Mine), which he wrote for the newspaper “Yerel Kent”.   The court has been trying Aslan, who is the Kilis Provincial Representative for the Office Workers Union affiliated with the Confederation of Public Employees Trade Unions (KESK), for the crime of “publicly denigrating the armed forces”, asking for the sentence of two years in prison. However, it stopped the process in the third hearing of the case yesterday. The union member, whose article was published in the newspaper “Yerel Kent”, had said that “Every year children, women, people from all ages die or get permanently incapacitated because of the mines Turkey planted.”

On July 25, the 1^st Civil Court of Peace of Mersin acquitted Selçuk Polat, head of the Mersin 68ers Association, Osman Koçak, head of the Mersin 78ers Association and Ethem Dinçer, former head of the Mersin 78ers Association, of the accusation of “praising he crime and the criminal” for holding a commemoration activity for Deniz Gezmiş and his friends, the revolutionaries of 60s and 70s, who were either killed or hung. The accused defended their case by pointing out to the fact that there was a commemoration for the same revolutionaries in Ankara with tens of thousands of people and therefore what they did in Mersin could not be construed as crime, unless the law applies differently in different places. Likewise, Nişan Mesut Oyardı, provincial head of Mersin branch of the Turkish Communist Party (TKP), was acquitted of the same accusation.

On July 11, Malatya’s 3rd High Criminal Court sentenced Rüştü Demirkaya, Tunceli reporter of Dicle News Agency (DİHA), to prison for 6 years 3 months for “helping and harboring the organization of Kurdish Workers Party (PKK).” Reporter’s lawyer Barış Yıldırım characterized the court decision, which was based only on informant statements, as “anti-juristic”. They are planning to appeal the decision. Demirkaya was arrested in accordance with informant Engin Korcum’s testimony in Tunceli province of Eastern Turkey in 2006 and was put in Malatya E Type Prison. According to the testimony of the informant, Demirkaya had gone to the village of Sakak in the center of Tunceli in the autumn of 2005 and met with the PKK people, giving them a laptop computer and 10 empty CD’s. Yıldırım said that Demirkaya was in Alsancak İzmir at the time of the said crime, enrolled in Vizyon Private Tutoring, possibly for a university exam, not in Tunceli. The court sentenced Demirkaya and the twelve other people tried together with him to prison for 6 years and 3 months for “helping and harboring PKK” under article 314/2 of the Penal Code (TCK).

İbrahim Öpengin, member of the Municipality Council of the district of Şemdinli, who had condemned the bombing in the Dyarbakır Koşuyolu Park on September 12, 2006, and journalist Erkan Çapraz, chief editor of the newspaper Yüksekova Haber, who had published this statement, were acquitted of the charge of “provoking to commit crime.” Öpengin said that whenever they express their concerns through democratic means, they face court orders. The bombing had resulted in ten deaths and 4 wounded, mostly children. Similarly, journalist Çapraz pointed out to the pressures they encounter when they publish the slogans used in the meetings or announcements.

The Criminal Court of First Instance of Kocaeli province began trying Y.Y. for violating article 301 and “humiliating the government, the organs of the judiciary, the military or the Police Department.” He was sued because of a conversation he was having with another person in a city bus in a rather coarse language.  

Ministry of Justice did not give permission for the trial of İbrahim Tığ, editor of the newspaper “Devrek Bölge Haber” (Devrek Regional News), under article 301. The complaint that Tığ “openly denigrated the government” came from Zonguldak Governorship (a province in western Black Sea region), but the ministry refused the case on June 17. Pelin Aydemir Erdem, lawyer of the newspaper, said a writer should be able to write freely and therefore the ministry made the right decision.

İbrahim Tığ’s article “Here are those who sell the motherland and its assets”, which was published in his column named “Sınır Noktası” (Frontier Point) on March 14, 2008, was about privatizations. He argued in his article that the previous governments of DYP-SHP and ANAP-DYP-DSP had also conducted many privatization programs, but the government of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) held the record in this area. He furthermore equated this with treason.

Diyarbakır’s High Criminal Juvenile Court acquitted the six children, members of the Diyarbakır Yenişehir Municipality Cildren’s Chorus, of the case filed for singing Kurdish march on July 3. While three children were elementary school students, the other three were middle school students. Another group of three children who were accused of the same crime, but were taken to a high criminal court since they were older than 15, were acquitted on June 19 as well. The Prosecutor’s Office had charged the older children with “doing propaganda for an organization”. The children had sung songs in eight different languages in the International Cultural and Artistic Music Festival at San Francisco between September 23 and October 10, 2007. One of the songs was the Kurdish “Ey Raqıp” (Hey, Enemy), written by Iranian singer of Kurdish ethnicity Rauf Dildar in 1940.

The 9^th High Criminal Court of Istanbul is prosecuting Hüseyin Akyol, chief editor of the newspaper Yedinci Gün, and Ali Turgay, license holder and director in-charge of the same newspaper, for the charges of “doing propaganda for the terrorist organization and publishing their statements”  and “praising the crime and the criminal.” Aykol and Turgay are facing nine and a half year prison sentences for addressing Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned leader of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), as the “Kurdish Folk Leader” in the article “Çatışma bir tek Türkiye’nin çıkarına değil” (Turkey is the only country this conflicts is against its interest). The court rejected the demand by Özcan Kılıç, journalists’ lawyer, to hear some journalists as witnesses. The third hearing of the case will be on November 6.  

Writer Murat Coşkun is in prison for “provoking hostility among people” with his book titled “Acının Dili Kadın” (Woman, Language of Pain), which was published by Peri Publishing in January 2002. Coşkun and representative of the publishing company Ahmet Önal were sued under article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) and the file was sent to the Ministry of Justice on July 2 for permission. According to publisher Önal, it was claimed that the 128 page long book had a passage where the members of the Turkish Armed Forces were called “vultures” and another passage where the propaganda of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) was made through PKK militant Zeynep Kınacı, whose code name was given as Zilan.

Niyazi Uslay was convicted under article 301 for revealing that he had written a biased report against Hatice Koç who had said that a work inspector was terminated after a work accident. The 20^th Criminal Court of First Instance of Izmir sentenced Uslay to ven months in prison and later converted it to a fine of 130 euro. Uslay had written the following in his petition: “Those who took control of the country’s administration on September 12, 1980 created the richest generals of the world, attacked country’s intellectuals and youth who seek for solution the backwardness of the country, hang them, killed them and pushed Turkey to a moral degeneration which still controls the country…While these generals put those on the one side of the center through genocide and they fed the other side…”   

Arrangements and Rights Seeking

There were no new developments in the case about the attack on Vatan’s reporters Alper Uruş, İlker Akgüngör and Ahmet Şener by the İsmailağa religious community. The journalists were attacked when they were trying to take pictures of the two villas owned by Mahmut Hodja, head of the religious community. The attack took place when the journalists were in their car to leave the scene. The perpetrators took them out forcefully, beat them up and took away their bags and cameras. The eleven people who were taken into custody following the complaint by the journalists were released by the prosecutor. Uruş said that they had given their statements to Beykoz Prosecutor Orhan Korkmaz on May 8.

On September 18, the Criminal Court of First Instance of Beytüşşebap did not believe that 24 year old journalist Emin Bal manhandled three police officers in the district police department, but it sentenced Bal to prison for insulting police officers Muharrem Başel, Namdar Kürşat and Mahmut Ekim. Appealing the decision on September 23, Doğan News Agency (DHA) reporter Bal said the following in his petition: “Not only I was taken into custody unfairly, I was also prevented from doing my job. The police officers insulted and manhandled me. When I got a medical report do document what happened to me, they also somehow managed to get report. The Beytüşşebap people know this.” The incident that the three police officers described as “He attacked us” had happened on October 10 2006, when Bal tried to park his motorcycle in front of the Governorship building in order to observe an incident of  armed attack in the Courthouse.

On Septmeber 2, journalist Hacı Boğatekin of the Gerger district in the Adıyamn province filed a criminal complaint against Prosecutor Sadullah Ovacıklı for stigmatizing him in the letter he wrote to Prof. Dr. Mustafa Altıntaş, a faculty of the Economy Department of the Gazi University. In the letter, Ovacıklı described Boğatekin, ownerof the newspaper Gerger Fırat, and Cumali Badur, owner of the internet site gergerim.com, as “so-called journalists” and reacts to Altıntaş’s calling them as his “fellow townsperson”. Describing the process he started following the allegations of “insult” and “publicly denigrating the state”, Ovacıklı found it necessary to describe the brother of the journalist as the district head of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), his nephew as “member of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK)” and another journalist as being of “Armenian” descent. Altıntaş replied to prosecutor’s letter very harshly, criticizing him for separating people according to their ethnicities and accusing him of racism.

On August 13, Bahçelievler District Governorship in Istanbul did not grant permission for the trial of the police officers who had attacked daily Cumhuriyet’s reporters Esra Açıkgöz and Ali Deniz Uslu at this year’s May Day police violence.

During the May Day police violation, reporter Uslu was attacked by police on the street where the building of daily Cumhuriyet is and his arm was broken. Cumhuriyet reporter Açıkgöz was attacked with batons. Mehmet Nuri Ö. was identified as the police officer who attacked the reporters, but an expert report penned on July 7 concluded that there was no evidence showing that he was the police who attacked the reporters and since the reporters did not come to give their statements, there was no need to start an investigation about the police officer. Therefore, the Bahçelievler District Governorship did not grant permission for the investigation.

Journalist Hacı Boğatekin of Adıyaman filed a lawsuit for damages against Judge Ayşe Gül Şimşek of the Criminal Court of First Instance of Gerger, prosecutors Sedat Turan and Sadullah Ovacıklı in the amount of half a euro for being kept in prison unlawfully for 109 days. The journalist claimed that his legal rights were violated through arbitrary and intentional decisions and sent the evidence list to the court. Boğatekin was kept in prison twice until the hearing days to prevent the possibility of escape.

Boğatekin was sent to the Kahta Prison for continuing his publications about the time when Prosecutor Ovacıklı threatened him for calling religious community leader Fethullah Gülen Feto for short. Boğateking was accused of “attempting to influence the process of fair trial” after he had brought this incident to the agenda of the national media.

It was suggested that a document that supposedly belonged to Adnan Akfırat of  the Worker Party in the Ergenekon file was information about Turgut Özal, the eight president, Hiram Abas, former undersecretary of the National Intelligence Organization, and Assoc. Prof. Bahriye Üçok. Among the same documents in the 295^th folder in the Ergenekon file, there was also information about a person named Ahmet giving some information to Doğu Perinçek, president of the Worker Party, regarding the assassination plans. According to the allegation that appeared on the August 20, 2008 issue of the newspaper Star, one statement in this document said, “Özal was being naughty. Some people got disturbed when he assigned Hiram to that post. There are others on the list: Kamran İnan, Recep Ergun, Mahir Kaynak, Atilla Aytek, Türkan Akyol, İhsan Doğramacı. The second level targets are Necmettin Erbakan, Esat Coşan, Abdurrahman Dilipak, İsmail Nacar, Fehmi Koru, Mustafa Kalaycıoğlu. Oral Çelik is finished. The ones who will do this are those who had Abdi İpekçi killed. They used him, he was recommended. They kicked out the person above Oral Çelik from the army. They did it just to show off.”

It was suggested that those unpublished “state secret” pages of the Susurluk Report published by the Inspection Committee of the Prime Ministry after the infamous Susurluk traffic accident that revealed the crime connections between the mafia and the state was added into the Ergenekon indictment. The report reveals the identities of the murdered journalists as reporter Hafız Akdemir for the newspapers Yeni Ülke and Özgür Gündem, reporter Yahya Orhan for the newspapers Yeni Ülke, Güneş and Özgür Gündem, a reporter Mecit Akgün for the periodical 2000’e Doğru and the newspaper Yeni Ülke, reporter Burhan Karadeniz for the newspaper Yeni Ülke, Diyarbakır bureau chief Halit Güngen for the periodical 2000’e Doğru, reporter İzzet Keser for the newspaper Sabah, reporter Cengiz Altun for the Batman branch of the newspaper Yeni Ülke and reporter Çetin Ababay for the newspaper Özgür Gündem. In the Susuruk report, there was only information about intellectual-journalist Musa Anter, who was murdered in the Seyrantepe neighborhood of Diyarbakır, a province in the eastern Turkey on September 20, 1992. Although the murder was sentenced by the European Court of Human Rights, those responsible for the murder were not punished in Turkey. Karadeniz, who is mentioned as the journalist killed in the Susurluk Report, was murdered in Germany in 2003.

In the Ergenekon investigation, suspects Adnan Akfırat and Ümit Sayın denied the allegations regarding the murder of journalist Güngen. Tuncay Güney, one of the witnesses in the case, said that journalist Akfırat, who is accused of being a member of the Ergenekon organization, had told him that Güngen was killed by the Turkish Gladio in the 90s. Akfırat denied the allegation. Güngen was killed two days after he had published an article titled “Hizbullah Çevik Kuvvet Merkezi’nde Eğitildi” (Hizbullah was trained in the Riot Police Center) in the periodical 2000’e Doğru on February 16, 1992. The secret witness of the case also stated that Güngen was close to Doğu Perinçek at the time, he had photographed the training of the Hizbullah militants, uncovered the Hizbulcontra relations, sent the photographs to Perinçek, was murdered before the photographs were published and Akfırat had said in those days that Güngen was murdered by the Turkish Gladio, later adding the statement that there had been a Kemalist-Socialist alliance.     

Minister of Justice Mehmet Ali Şahin said that the investigation about the police brutality in the May Day celebrations was continuing, although only one police officer has given his statement and no public official has been sent to court yes.