Enis Berberoğlu, arrested lawmaker from Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), made a statement from prison through his attorneys.
“I have been staying alone in a cell for 2 months due to an unlawful court verdict. I have been visited by only about 50 CHP lawmakers and my attorneys. They can be asked about what we talked during these talks. I remember that I always talked about my legal conditions, and yet I have not lost my hope on justice. To conclude, the manifestation of justice may be prevented, I may be absolved belatedly, my torment may prolong. However, they cannot turn me into a guilty, a defamer or a confitent since there is no crime at all," Berberoğlu said in a written statement published by the CHP headquarters via his lawyers Murat Ergün and Yiğit Acar on Aug. 14.
Turkish President and chair of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan threatened main opposition CHP party leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, implying that an ongoing probe into "espionage" and the "leaking of secret state documents" can also reach Kılıçdaroğlu.
"His words are pure evidence of the plot staged against the CHP. This is the confirmation of a big plot which unjustly took Enis Berberoğlu hostage and put him in prison and which unjustly targets CHP and its chair using Enis Berberoğlu," CHP’s spokesperson Bülent Tezcan responded to President Erdoğan’s inflammatory statement.
Enis Berberoğlu was arrested on June 14 after a court handed him a 25-year jail sentence for the accusation of providing Cumhuriyet newspaper with a video purporting to show Turkey's intelligence agency trucking weapons into Syria. The report in Cumhuriyet newspaper in May 2015 said that trucks owned by Turkey's state intelligence service were found to contain weapons and ammunition that were headed for Syria when they were stopped and searched in southern Turkey in early 2014.
