Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Mamoste Update

We were in the old bazaar district of Hatay, trying to lose a Gypsy kid hounding us for change, when Delal got the call that 15 people in the so-called 'KCK' operations had been released. The only name that anyone knew for sure was Ragip Zarakolu--the Nobel Prize nominee. We rushed to an internet cafe and did a quick search of all the live news freeds. We finally found the list on the Bianet website--no one was surprised, but mamoste was not on it. Luckily, his roommate Muhsin Yenisöz was. Mr. Muhsin was seriously ill with heart problems and insomnia and a host of other afflictions that kept him in and out of the hospital so his release was a blessing--though baffling. There was no trial, no hearing, no investigation of any kind. They simply released them--which means either one or two things. They genuinely think they are all terrorists, and releasing terrorists it not a real problem for them (which is insane). Or, they knew they were all innocent in the first place, and this whole thing has very little to do with crime or terrorism, and everything to do with getting rid of your political opponents.

The week before, the prosecutor's indictment of Mamoste and all those arrested with him came out--over 2400 pages of supposed crimes. Mamoste name pops up in an alarming 800 of them, which means they appear to be especially targeting him. The papers have been full of stories about how ridiculous the accusations in this indictment are--one man is giving the recipe of a Turkish omelette and the police say it was code for a Molotov cocktail--I will write something about the indictment later, once I have looked more carefully through it. Not that the indictment really matters. Since this is not really about a crime anyway, salvation has nothing to do with evidence or justice but rather with the whim of the judges and the government.  Hundreds of pages of recorded lectures, telephone conversations, emails, and text messages interpreted and misinterpreted willy nilly to suit the needs of the accusers.  Or maybe just made up.  It's hard to know if they really recorded all those communications or just went all out and faked it like they did in the Balyoz case (which is being chronicled by Dani Rodrik here--take a look at this for a preview of what's in store for us.)

I am really not ready to write all this, but I need a place for the rage. When the indictment came out, I remember going out on our balcony full of this random energy, this incredibly powerful hatred. I couldn't stand still. I couldn't think. I couldn't do anything at all but rage and rage inside my head. If I feel like this, I can't even begin to think how my wife and her aunts and uncle feel.

This is evil. This is the use of the might of state power to destroy people's lives. But the fun thing is you can hide it all with all the power of modern advertising and spin. The released of Zarakolu is a PR campaign. See? We've released the poor innocents--as if to imply all those left must be truly guilty. As if to show how merciful and forgiving they are.

More later--when I have time to think and organize.

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