During the third hearing of the case at the Istanbul 27th High Criminal Court, Ahmet Şık said the country was going through days that voices telling the truth are being tried to be silenced, adding that the fundamental rights were suspended with the state of emergency imposed right after the failed coup.
Ahmet Şık started his plea by saying he would “present the course of the organisation” the government has been looking for.
Summarizing some of the critical junctions in the past 5 years, and naming the ruling party AKP and the Gülen sect as the two powers that built the freak that is called ‘the New Turkey’, Şık stated that the attempted coup on July 15, 2016, was the greatest defeat of the Gülen religious sect, and also the greatest victory for them. Because, he maintained, "the model of government, society, and individual idealised by Fethullah Gülen has been put into practice after July 15."
Referring to the AKP leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s words, Ahmet Şık stated that the reason for the Gülen sect to attain an amount of power so dangerous as to infiltrate all ranks in the government is the AKP government, whose leader confessed that they had given "whatever the sect wanted". Now, Şık continued, "you want to generate FETÖ (Fethullah Gülen’s Terrorist Organization) out of Cumhuriyet".
Ahmet Şık also reminded that, when everyone was too afraid to accuse the Gülen sect of anything, his book on the sect was named "The Imam's Army", for which he was also arrested and tried at the time. Şık maintained: "If Erdoğan read what journalists and writers had told, instead of having a criminalised relationship with them, none of us would be here today."
Ahmet Şık told that he did not expect anything from the judges, since their demands of justice do not reach the judicial authorities, and wrapped up his pleading with the slogan used in rallies against the authoritarian regime of Sultan Abdulhamid II: "Down with tyranny, long live liberty!"
