- In the trial concerning the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB), lawyer Hüseyin Ersöz, representing defendant journalist Yavuz Oğhan, submitted a petition to the court stating that restricting the conditions for journalists in the courtroom violates the principle of openness.
- Ersöz said: “The conditions of members of the press should not be worsened but rather improved. Journalists are the eyes and ears of the public within the framework of the public’s right to receive information.”
MLSA – Hüseyin Ersöz, the lawyer of journalist Yavuz Oğhan, who is being tried as a defendant in the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) case, submitted a petition to the Istanbul 40th High Criminal Court regarding the working conditions of members of the press in the courtroom.
In his petition, Ersöz stated that restricting the conditions under which journalists can follow the hearing is contrary to the principle of openness, which is an element of the right to a fair trial.
In a statement on his social media account, Ersöz also said that while debates continue over broadcasting the IBB trial on the state broadcaster TRT, it is not right to roll back the working conditions of members of the press. Ersöz said, “The conditions of members of the press who ensure the public’s right to receive information should not be worsened, but rather improved.”
“We submitted a petition because we were not given the floor”
Ersöz said they wanted to raise the issue by taking the floor during the hearing, but the presiding judge did not give them the opportunity to speak. Therefore, he said, they submitted their requests to the court through a written petition.
In the petition submitted to the court, it was stated that the section reserved for members of the press in the courtroom is quite far from the court panel and the defendants, that the sound does not reach sufficiently, and that there are no physical conditions that would facilitate journalists’ work.
The petition also noted that problems such as the absence of desks in the section allocated to journalists and the inability to use electricity had previously been raised.
“The principle of openness guarantees the transparency of the trial”
In the petition, Ersöz recalled that the principle of openness—one of the fundamental principles of criminal proceedings—is guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights, the Constitution, and the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Referring to the Constitutional Court’s Nevruz Bozkurt decision, the petition included the following assessment:
“The purpose of the principle of the openness of proceedings is to ensure the transparency of judicial activity and to prevent arbitrariness in trials by opening the functioning of the judicial mechanism to public scrutiny.”
The petition stated that journalists, as the “eyes and ears of the public,” ensure the public’s right to receive information and also contribute to ensuring the openness of judicial proceedings. For this reason, it emphasized that the section allocated to members of the press in the courtroom should have physical conditions that do not prevent journalists from following the trial.
