Bülent Keneş’s twisted logic: If the prosecutors cannot prove their case, the defense has to do it for them…

Alexander Christie-Miller deserves a lot of credit for pursuing the Sledgehammer case doggedly. His latest is here.

What is interesting in this article is that Christie-Miller has also spent some time discussing the case with Bülent Keneş of Today’s Zaman.  As we have written recently and frequently, Zaman and its sister publication Today’s Zaman have long engaged in systematic distortion of the facts of the case. So we were quite interested in reading about his discussion with Keneş.

“Keneş argues that so many sources point to the guilt of the Sledgehammer suspects that the notion that the plot might be fake is “impossible”.

Along with the evidence originally handed to Taraf, and documents later seized from a naval base in Golcuk, Kenes notes the diaries of Admiral Ozden Ornek, published by Nokta magazine in 2007, which reveal an apparent military plot to overthrow the AKP in 2004.

He also refers to another diary, taken from the computer of journalist Mustafa Balbay, a suspect in the Ergenekon trial, and which appears to detail preparations for a 2003 military coup.”

As Christie-Miller rightly points out, neither of these diaries actually mention Sledgehammer or the other operations linked to it. How Keneş can jump from this “evidence” to the conclusion that the Sledgehammer plot must be definitely genuine is beyond us (“the notion that the plot might be fake is ‘impossible’”).  It’s as if an eyewitness account of someone with a blue blazer committing a robbery is enough to convict any and all individuals wearing blue blazers.

There is even worse.  Consider what Keneş has to say when Christie-Miller confronts him with the evidence that indicates the plot documents are fake.

“Most glaringly, the CD originally given to Taraf that contains most of the incriminating evidence has a falsified creation date of March 5th 2003.

But the CD itself contains files that refer to dozens of institutions and organizations that did not exist in 2003, or else are referred to by names they only acquired later.

The core document detailing the coup plans and dated December 2002, refers to an NGO, the Turkish Youth Union, which was not founded until 2006.

However supporters of the trial show little willingness to discuss or explain these irregularities.

Keneş is similarly unwilling to discuss the irregularities in the case. He says that the apparent anachronistic references to places and organizations can be explained by the fact that plans were still being updated as late as 2009.

But asked why documents were apparently backdated to make it appear that they were created at the time of the controversial military seminar, he replies simply: “The suspects should answer these questions.””

Read that last response from Bülent Keneş again. In effect, he is saying that it is up to the defendants to explain the inconsistencies in the case against them!  Now that really takes the cake.

Remember: this a case where the defendants have gone beyond showing that the prosecutors have no solid evidence.  They have actually demonstrated that the evidence against them is fake.  We are no longer talking about the presumption of innocence; we are talking about the certainty of the defendants having been framed.  And what’s Keneş’s response?  If the prosecutors cannot prove them guilty, the defense should do it for them…

We started fairly agnostic about the role of the Gülen movement in the Sledgehammer affair.  But it is hard to overlook the complicity of Zaman, the Gülen movement’s media flagship, in the travesty of justice that the case represents.

The only logical explanation for why Zaman’s editors work so hard to dismiss, against all logic, the evidence of forgery and distort the facts of the case is that they do not want the truth to come out.  That is what they share with the “mafia” that is fabricating and planting evidence.