STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE IS A REASON FOR EXISTENCE FOR ISTANBUL BAR ASSOCIATION:WE WILL HAVE THE FINAL WORD
A new judicial year has started in Turkey today. We hope that the new judicial year will enable new futures for our colleagues and it will be a milestone of just judgments to be made. It is our desire that this new judicial year will be step in which belief in justice, which is not only a symbol for a life in dignity but also a guarantee to secure an equitable life for our citizens, will be strengthened.
We are aware that our wishes for the new judicial year will take time to become real. Because, the experiences we had only last year are enough to express that our country is in a serious “judicial depression”. While we are referring to judicial depression;
We try to point at the urgency of restoring the mechanism, which has been corrupted starting from the admittance to magistracy and prosecution combined with the deficiencies experienced in fulfilling the legal profession.
We endeavor to explain that society will be divided and weakened, even worse by the judiciary itself, if politics manages to penetrate into the Turkish Judicial System.
We try to emphasize that independence and impartiality of judiciary will not go beyond lexicology as these two will not be credible if they do exist in the discourse, but not in the decisions made.
We try to exclaim that we will fall behind the values we have idealized while defense is diminished into a formal element, files are veiled, lawyers are assaulted, killed and accused, and lawyers are inhibited even from the courthouses.
It is our effort to unveil the truth inherent in the very core of all the experiences shaping our concerns.
We try to define what goals to be attained and take a note of it to the history, and explain that no“goals” shall not be attained if this is how the things go.
We are lawyers and we are the ones to stay, innholders in a sense. We have never seen that those holding the political power have succeeded when they misuse judiciary as tool for their political strategies. As we have deduced from all the processes we have been through such as state security courts, courts with special authority, states of emergency and peace criminal magistracies, the way we point at is the sole possible way leading to a state governed by the rule of law.
We are aware that authoritarianism is encouraged in every period when separation of powers vanishes. We insistently say that judiciary will not be able to fulfill its real function unless it is separated from the legislative and executive powers, that the decisions framed under pressure will have a boomerang effect and that the authority of the political powers limited by law is a guarantee for them, per se. We are lawyers and our only field of struggle is to achieve a state governed by the rule of law and to make the rule of law a sovereign power.
Yes, we are lawyers;
The reason for our existence is to guarantee the legal security of our citizens and to protect their rights and freedoms.
Obedience, indulgence, subjugation and consent are all against our genetic structure.
We are fulfilling a profession which objects. Giving a struggle is ahistorical and universal reflex and duty of us.
The only powerholders we lean to are people and law.
Our only compass is justice and our biggest wealth is our professional dignity.
We will create judicial years which, we believe, will be just together with our people.
The judiciary will be the honor of the republic and the republic will be the same for the judiciary.
We will have the final word.
BECAUSE WE ARE LAWYERS.