Saturday, January 7, 2012

Turkish TV Station reports from the future!

The infamous OdaTV trial, in which several journalists, including Ahmet Şık and Nedim Şener, are tried, continued yesterday (for our earlier coverage of this trial, see yesterday's Newsfeed, and "Melon, you say?" including the links there). Accepting the prosecutor's demand, at 9:48 PM, the court announced its decision to continue their detention until the next session. Samanyolu TV announced this decision 21 minutes in advance (see T24 and note the time on the screenshot below).

How could Samanyolu TV prophesize the court's decision? Samanyolu TV is well-known to be associated with the Gülen movement. Ahmet Şık was arrested mainly because of his book manuscript which was an exposé of the movement's influence over the bureaucracy of security intelligence and judiciary [you can read selections from the book on Human Rights Foundation of Turkey - the book has since been published in Turkish under the title of OOO Kitap]. On Monday, January 2, Orhan Gazi Ertekin, the president of the Union of Judges and Prosecutors for Democracy and Freedom, confirmed Gülen movement's influence over the judiciary, adding that "the guardianship of the army came to an end; the guardianship of the judiciary began. The judiciary became like the army (read more on Jiyan)." Ertuğrul Mavioğlu, who has covered the movement for the daily Radikal, recently suggested that the Gülen movement replaced the military as Turkey's "deep state" (see Justin Vela's report on Eurasianet).