Can journalist Şahin Alpay be a coup plotter?

Reading the accusations in the indictment, listening to the defense of the suspect and evaluating all the evidence is fundamental when trying to express an objective opinion about a legal case that is continuing.

But if you know the suspect in the case, personal information about him or her, your instincts and your inner voice will all take you—independent from physical evidence—to a certain point in advance.

So, I was never convinced regarding the claims accusing journalist Şahin Alpay as a coup plotter.

When I examined the accusations, leaving my instincts aside, the first oddity I came across was the contradiction in the framework of the accusations, which were directed against Şahin as well as other colleagues I knew, like Nuriye Ural and Lale Sarıibrahimoğlu.

The prosecution office claims at the end of the indictment that "along with the columns that include criminal content as well as with columns that supplement the purpose and the aims of the organization, even though it is not possible to detect criminal content in them, the suspects have fulfilled their mission within the hierarchy of FETÖ/PDY [Fethullahist Terrorist Organization/Parallel State Structure]."

With this expression, the prosecution recognizes the fact that "it is undetectable whether [the articles] alone contain criminal content."

However, the suspects are claimed to have "supplemented the purposes and aims of the organization" with these columns, even though these columns do not include a "criminal factor."

Since I could not understand this, I inquired and here is the answer I received from the prominent criminal lawyer, Professor Köksal Bayraktar:

"I have never seen such a description, even in the worst indictments I have...