I too was arrested pending trial in 1980

News over the past week has featured the case in which 74 soldiers, 14 of them under arrest, are on trial for invading the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) Istanbul office on the night of the attempted coup on July 15, 2016. In its fifth hearing, the court decided to release 10 more suspects. 

I flashed back to my own arrest and release after the Sept. 12, 1980 coup. I was arrested in 1980 and jailed for 14 months, after which I was released by the martial law court in which I appeared. I was arrested by a court in the heat of the events and without evidence even being collected, and the court decided to release me only after the evidence was collected and the indictment was written. 

This is very important in terms of justice.  

In the first days after the Sept. 12, 1980 coup, a decision for the total arrest in absentia was made for Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) administrators, of which I was one. Because I trusted in the justice system, I handed myself over. I thought I would be released in a couple of days. 

I ended up in jail for 14 months. A death sentence was demanded for us on charges of "being in the administration of an armed organization and trying to topple the constitutional order to replace it with a fascist regime." I will never forget the agony my wife and my 8-year-old son suffered. "Even if they don't hang you, they will give you at least 10 years in jail," was the common belief. The military judges set to try us were reported to be left-leaning. In prison I got together with other colleagues with a legal background like me to study the indictment and the Military Supreme Court of Appeals practices. 

I remember telling my cell-mates: "Even if our judges are leftists, we will be released...