Based in France, the sociologist and writer Pinar Selek has been on trial for 25 years in her native country, Turkey, for a crime she has always denied and which probably never even existed.
Four times tried for terrorism and four times acquitted, Pinar Selek will once again be tried from this Friday in Istanbul. But unlike dozens of friends, colleagues, figures from civil society and the political world who made the trip out of solidarity, the writer and sociologist will not attend her trial. Targeted by an international arrest warrant, the one who now risks life imprisonment lives in France.
For 25 years, the researcher has been fighting an accusation that has been established as fabricated. At the origin of this Kafkaesque affair, the university work of the sociologist, who was very interested in minorities, Armenian and Kurdish. It is this last subject which is disturbing and which earned him his first arrest in July 1998.
She is then asked for the names of the people she has met. He is accused of being linked to fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Pinar Selek refuses to speak. They deprive her of sleep, they dislocate her arm. ” There, they wanted to confiscate not only my research, but also all my profession and my beliefs “, she tells RFI.
” Psychological torture »
” When they put me in jail, I thought I wouldn’t stay there long. But two months later, I learned that I was facing a new charge “, she continues. The researcher is now involved in a deadly explosion at the Spice Market in Istanbul. No one had ever questioned her about it. ” I learned it on TV “, she specifies.
This is the beginning of what she compares to a ” psychological torture “: her lawyers must prove that she has nothing to do with the explosion, which experts attribute to a gas bottle, recalls our correspondent in Istanbul, Anne Andlauer. The prosecution maintains the thesis of an attack. But the court does not hold any evidence. Pinar Selek was therefore acquitted four times between 2006 and 2014.
Each time, the prosecution appealed. And each time, the Court of Cassation cancels the acquittal – the last in June 2022.
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