The President of Turkish Bar Association (TBB) objected the President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s statement on the clothing of the suspects of the failed coup in 2016 and the alleged members of the organization behind the coup at court halls.
Metin Feyzioğlu, the President of TBB, objected President Erdoğan’s declaration on the clothing of suspects of the failed coup in July 2016 and the alleged members of Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ). Feyzioğlu said, “If an inconvenient cloth is worn at the court hall, the chief judge makes the decision, he makes him get changed. There is no necessity to make a regulation.”
President Erdoğan had said that those who are associated with the failed coup of July 2016 would no more come to courts wearing whatever they wanted. He said that “the putschists will wear brown jumpsuits and the others, terrorists will wear suits.”
The President of Turkish Bar Association, opposing Erdoğan’s words, said, “The problem is even worse than transition to the practice of putting on uniform clothes or jumpsuits to the people who are judged in order to reveal whether they are guilty or not, i.e. suspects, which gives the impression that they are criminalized beforehand.”
Metin Feyzioğlu also said, “The worst problem is that while the highest position of the State ‘heralds’ this decision, he forms sentences that the suspects are seen as criminals beforehand.”
Before Erdoğan’s declaration on the clothing of suspects, some suspects of the failed coup had put on t-shirts on which “hero” was written. The suspects had to leave the courtroom and following this incident several Turkish citizens were arrested for wearing similar t-shirts.
