Is the Turkish judiciary really blind?

Visitors to the Greek Island of Kos will have noted a building from Roman times, facing Hippocrates' famous plane tree and the Ottoman-era Ghazi Hasan Pasha Mosque. It bears the Latin inscription "Legum Servi Sumus" which means "We are slaves to the law."
 
That doesn't sound so good of course. Slavery is a negative concept and the term "law" does not denote justice on its own. If it then Germany's infamous Nuremberg Laws of 1935 would also have to be considered just.

The full quotation this inscription is taken from is said to belong to the Roman politician and jurist Marcus Tillius Cicero. It should read "Legum servi sumus ut liberi esse possimus." In other words "We are all servants of law so that we may be free." 

Why the second part of Cicero's quotation - which gives it its true meaning - has been omitted in this case is for the historians of antiquity to figure out. Maybe the Roman rulers of Kos felt they needed the first bit only to keep people in check.

What Cicero says, on the other hand, is still the basis of our modern understanding of law. We submit to rules and regulations in a society so that collectively we can all feel free. This is another way of saying "laws are there to regulate society, not restrict it." 

This of course requires an independent judiciary so that "the law is blind," as the saying goes. Any law that restricts freedom on the basis of questionable evidence or arguments, or works to the benefit of some at the expense of others is not just. 

There is a new debate raging in Turkey today regarding the law and justice. It started after Ömer Faruk Kavurmacı, the businessman son-in-law of Istanbul's powerful mayor, Kadir Topbaş, was released shortly after he was arrested for allegedly...