Cumhuriyet trial: Litmus test

It might be a surprise for some, but it is an unfortunate reality of this country. At the end of June there were 171 journalists in prison. Prominent human rights activists, among them Amnesty International Turkey director İdil Eser, have been placed behind bars on grounds of membership in a terrorist gang. Judges, prosecutors, lawyers, academics, soldiers, journalists, businessmen, civil servants, municipal workers and mayors have been sacked, banished, sent to cells…

Journalists who have engaged in nothing other than journalism and wrote news articles exposing what they considered some dirty deals of those in the government as well as those in executive positions of the newspaper that run such stories were branded as terrorists by a prosecutor who himself as well has been going through a judicial process on grounds he was a member of a terrorist gang.

How many thousands of civil servants, soldiers, municipal workers have been laid down with decrees by the state of emergency? Was it not a lamentable development to see the eminent law professor İbrahim Kaboğlu not only expelled from Marmara University but also, like all others fired under regulations of the emergency rule, barred from holding any public or private position or travel abroad to undertake any of the prestigious offers he might receive?

The other day on a private news channel, as part of an effort to defame Turkey's second president and former social democratic leader İsmet İnönü, there was a story about the letter of Albert Einstein written to the founding President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. In the letter, Einstein had requested permission for some eminent Jewish professors to be employed "without any payment" at Turkish universities. Reportedly, İnönü referred the letter to the...