Thread by @gezisavunmasi

Yiğit Aksakoğlu: I have been waiting for this moment as a prisoner for seven months. I am a member of civil society, having worked and prepared publications in the fields of civil society and social politics.

YA: The accusations against me in the indictment are utterly baseless and at odds with my own activities.

YA: I was born in Aydın in 1976. I graduated from Construction Engineering at YTÜ in 2000. I graduated with a masters degree in civil society organization management at London School of Economics. I had a place at the Europe Youth Forum.

YA: I began working at TESEV in 1999, and at the Civil Society Center at Bilgi University in 2001. I have publications from Bilgi University and elsewhere intended to affect policy. I published a book on advocacy with Bilgi University.

YA: In 2011, I began working part time on a project intended to reduce domestic abuse against children. I have known Marc Mataheru since then. I don’t understand how they’ve construed this as an element of a crime.

YA: The conversations I had regarding this project have been offered as if they have something to do with the Gezi events.

YA: In November 2018, as the Turkey representative of the Bernard van Leer Foundation, I met personally with Fatma Şahin for projects aimed at children in Antep Municipality.

YA: Within the scope of my expertise, I have offered contributions to a great variety of projects. I offered volunteer support for the Platform for Soldier’s Rights. I met with Ayfan Sefiroğlu and İsmet Yılmaz many times.

YA: We generated solutions for rights violations. We drew attention to the application of DİSKO [disciplinary barracks] and contributed to its repeal. We started an association to contribute to the peace process.

YA: I knew that it was my duty, as someone born in the farthest west part of this country, to offer support in peace process, not only for the provision of a ceasefire, but also for the provision of societal peace. I cannot understand how this has been conflated with Gezi events.

YA: Besides, some of those directing these claims are fugitives, while others are with me in the same prison. Some so-called newspapers wrote about our search for a 25,000 dollar fund for book printing. But this money was never taken.

YA: Had these journalists done a little bit of research, they would have seen that we gave ten times that amount to AKP-run municipalities.

YA: In my projects, I am the one who has suggested that we need to work with AKP-run municipalities. On the subject of soldiers, I worked with the Ministry of Defense.

YA: Despite that, I am wanted on an aggravated life sentence on an accusation that seems to want to make me bow down to the government. For seven months I have been in a ten-square-meter cell.

YA: I have never been on the side of momentary transformation that comes with violence. But I have been on the side of transformation. In this country, if you have responsibilities but no rights, you are a slave, and if you have rights but no responsibilities, you are a king.

YA: I have worked for the balance of rights and responsibilities. Members of civil society do not aspire to power, it is political parties that aspire to it. The demands of civil society are much more humble, like minimizing the deaths of babies.

YA: Civil society excludes violence, or else it is not civil. For this reason, as an expert on civil society and social development, I have never defended violence. The violent overthrow of the government is not something I have ever studied or defended.

YA: I have never once spoken in a way to incite violence or intended to overthrow the government. There is no crime, there is no criminal, there is only the brazen demand for an aggravated life sentence.

YA: Likewise, there is no justification for my solitary confinement since the day I was first detained. The indictment attempts to create the perception that a crime has been committed. In order to create this perception, it repeats the exact same claims every 5-10 pages.

YA: The recordings in the indictment that concern me began ten days after the park was cleared out. There is no other evidence against me. The indictment is not aimed at accusing me of membership in an organization, but it features expressions like "commanding an organization".

YA: There is no concrete evidence that, as a nonexistent member of a nonexistent party, we had been planning the Gezi events since 2011, and as a consequence, there is no relationship.

YA: It claims that I received orders from Osman Kavala in a 35-second phone conversation. Knowing Mr. Kavala is not a crime, of course, but I don't really know him anyway. In all of the recordings related to me, there's not just no violence, there's not even any insults.

YA: But the fact that I purchased the domain name siddetsizeylem [nonviolentprotest] was regarded as a crime.

YA: Hundreds of women in this country are killed every year. While the newspapers use initials to protect the names of people who kill women and a man who punched a political party leader, my purchase of a domain name is shown as proof of a crime.

YA: In an interview I gave on 1 September, I criticized violence by saying "the idiots shot fireworks." I have published dozens of pieces, before and after Gezi, on nonviolent protest and civil disobedience

YA: I simply do not understand how the initiative to prepare publications on nonviolent protest amounts to a crime, and I want to draw your attention to the fact that it was an initiative.

YA: In the conversations of mine that come up frequently in the indictment, I make reference to the man who played the piano, the standing man, and the fast-breaking on the ground. But these conversations happened after the park was cleared out.

YA: I am not a standing man, and I can't play piano. But standing, playing piano, and breaking fast are not crimes. We received a grant from Sivil Düşün intended to facilitate discussion on societal contributions to the peace processes.

YA: We held a meeting with the Helsinki Citizens Assembly. These had no connection to Gezi. In the indictment, my idea to bring Ivan Marovic to Turkey was considered a crime. I knew of Marovic's name from his works, which is why I recommended him, but it was only an idea.

YA: This was neither opportunism, nor a crime, nor even organizing a meeting. The arrest warrant itself confesses that the contents of the meeting were unknown.

YA: I have no relationship with Taksim Dayanışması nor with its members nor with Anadolu Kültür. Such a relationship wouldn't be a crime anyway, but there is none. There is no evidence of my relationship with Otpor and Canvas. There isn't even evidence that I was at Gezi.

YA: I came and went to Gezi but I didn't stay there overnight even once. Had I known I would spend 220 days in prison, I would have stayed at Gezi, even for just one day.

YA: I've posted not so much as a single tweet about Gezi. We organized Gezi, apparently, but there's not so much as a single Whatsapp group.

YA: So then, one has to ask, why am I here, why was I arrested, why couldn't I redeem myself from thw suspicion, why am I facing trial for an aggravated life sentence?

YA: According to the indictment, Gezi was "sui generis," but in fact, it is this indictment that is "sui generis." This indictment, evaluating a thousand-page dossier, requests aggravated life sentences for us.

YA: If I had been called, I would have given a statement, if I hadn't been in prison for 220 days I would have been here. It isn't possible that I have obscured evidence being evaluated six years later.

YA: This is an effort to criminalize civil society and the work of civil society. In my work I have never strayed from civil society, I have never defended the use of violence.

YA: This case is not just about me or about Gezi. This case is about the walls rising between the law and the citizenry. Your decision here will add a brick to this wall, or it will take a brick away.

YA: This detention has caused long-term suffering not just for me but for many people. As a consequence, I would like for someone to take responsibility. If this is a country founded on rights and responsibilities, then I want my most fundamental right, my freedom.

YA: I am requesting my release and exoneration, so that I can take my kids to school.
—end of Yiğit Aksakoğlu's testimony—