Are Turkish courts delaying trials of IS militants?
Although the latest wave of detentions of Islamic State militants and sympathizers have pleased the Turkish public, lawyer Ali Cil questions the handling of the Turkish judiciary in the Nigde case so far.
Recently, more than 1,000 IS militants and sympathizers have been detained in Turkey in various police operations.
The pro-government media have been jubilantly celebrating this wave of detentions as a major victory against the Islamic State (IS). But as I noted in my Al-Monitor article on July 13, given the faltering of the Turkish judicial system in dealing with IS, the real question will be the legal process such as indictments and the trials.
Reviewing the progress of the first ever IS court case at Nigde, it is clear that the Turkish judicial system doesn’t want to be questioned about its workings.
On March 20, 2014, IS militants Benjamin Xu, a German citizen of Kosovar origin; Qendrim Ramadani, a Swedish citizen of Kosovar origin; and Muhammed Zakiri, a Macedonian national who had entered Turkey illegally, killed a Turkish gendarmerie noncommissioned officer and a policeman, and later a truck driver whose truck they had hijacked, and wounded 17 others, mostly gendarmerie personnel in the clashes that ensued. These three perpetrators and Fuad Movsumov of Azerbaijan, who is charged with being an accessory before the fact, were later caught and arrested on charges of murdering a public official on duty, smuggling weapons and bullets into the country and looting.
