BY TAHA AKYOL
MILLIYET- Columnist Taha Akyol comments on the issue of wanted militant Metin Kaplan’s extradition by Germany. A summary of his column is as follows:
The German Court will not extradite Metin Kaplan to Turkey to let him be tried here on the grounds that there’s no guarantee of a fair trail, but rather possible torture in Turkey. During his meeting this week with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted on Kaplan’s extradition and personally guaranteed that he wouldn’t be tortured. Interior Minister Abdullah Aksu also told German Interior Minister Otto Schily, ‘Extradite Kaplan and I guarantee he won’t be tortured.’ However, all these efforts were in vain. Why is Turkey so insistent on getting Kaplan and putting him on trial? Kaplan and his gang can’t be a threat because they’re just a small, marginal, groups of psychopaths. Ankara is insistent on the issue both because the state should follow the trail of crimes and for the sake of Turkey’s international stature.
Some members of Kaplan’s gang were tried and convicted in Turkey, and there are statements in his file which were obtained through torture. More importantly, our courts considered these statements admissible in court. Kaplan’s lawyers brought these files to German courts, charging that there’s torture in Turkey. Then the German court refused to extradite Kaplan on the grounds that there’s no guarantee of a fair trial in Turkey.
Justice Minister Cemil Cicek prepared a file presenting our anti-torture laws. The file also contains Constitutional Court and appeals court rulings stating that evidence obtained illegally, such as through torture, is inadmissible. When I spoke with him, Cicek said, ‘Our government can’t give a guarantee on behalf of the judiciary, but we’ll point Germany to our laws and court rulings, and we’ll tell them that Kaplan should certainly be extradited.’
If German courts accept that ‘illegal evidence isn’t accepted in our judicial system, Kaplan will be extradited here, thus raising the stature of our judicial system in European legal and judicial circles. This would facilitate the extradition of other criminals to Turkey. If Ankara can strengthen our appearance of a ‘state of law,’ this would help our EU membership bid. What’s more, people will cease to imagine they can escape justice by fleeing abroad.