"Our New-Born Babies did not Wear Uniforms"

Defendants Ahmet Aydemir, father of Enver Aydemir, lawyer Davut Erkan, Halil Savda and Mehmet Atak stand accused of "alienating the public from military service" pursuant to Article 318 of the Turkish Criminal Law (TCK). They are being prosecuted on the grounds of a press release issued on 21 January 2011 in support of conscientious objector Enver Aydemir subsequent to one of his hearings.

The sentence "Everybody is born as a baby, nobody is born as a soldier" was part of the press release and is the bone of contention of the trial.

"Witnesses testified that they did not give birth to soldiers"

The file of lawyer Davut Erkan was separated from the main file. The other defendants are facing prison sentences of between six months and two years each. Their case was being continued before the Eskişehir 4^th Magistrate Criminal Court on 14 December.

Defence lawyer Senem Doğanoğlu summarized the hearing for bianet:

* Three women from Eskişehir who gave birth without any narcotics were heard as witnesses. They heard about the prosecution based on the sentence "Nobody is born as a soldier, everybody is born as a baby". Thereupon, the women applied to court to testify as witnesses that they gave birth to babies, not to soldiers.

* The witnesses stated that they gave birth without using any narcotics, hence they saw their babies right after birth. The women confirmed that their new-born babies did not wear a uniform.

Request for gynaecologist rejected

After the statements of the witnesses were heard, the defence party requested to hear a gynaecologist at court as an expert. Furthermore, defendant Mehmet Atak demanded to bring a constitutional lawyer to court in order to take his opinion on the question whether alienating the public from the military was a crime or not according to the Constitution. Doğanoğlu reported that these requests were dismissed by the court.

The lawyer said it was extremely disappointing that people were being prosecuted because they said "Everybody is born as a baby, nobody is born as a soldier". In her opinion, opening a trial on the grounds of such a sentence lacked a legal basis.

The next hearing was scheduled for 9 February 2012.

Case file incomplete

At the same time, conscientious objector Halil Savda was taken into police custody due to an arrest warrant when he was about to depart to Paris on an invitation of Amnesty International. Doğanoğlu informed bianet that the arrest warrant about him had been issued contrary to the procedure.

Doğanoğlu reminded the fact that Savda's first hearing had been adjourned to 14 December because he only learned about the trial by chance at the day of the initial hearing. Nevertheless, the court decided for an arrest warrant in an interim session on 11 November. The lawyer continued:

* The execution of the arrest warrant has not been added to the file yet. If the execution will not have been added by the time Halil returns to Turkey, he might be taken into custody again.

* For this reason we demanded to annul the arrest warrant at the hearing. However, nothing can be done as long as the execution has not been added to the file.

* If the arrest warrant had not been lifted, Halil would not have been able to go abroad. Yet, the document related to the lifting of that decision is still not in the file. Besides, this is just a matter of sending an e-mail. (EKN/KU)