Erdogan blasts Turkiye’s top court, backs probe into judges

ISTANBUL: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday accused Turkiye´s highest court of making repeated mistakes and defended an unprecedented criminal investigation against its judges.

Turkiye has been teetering on the edge of a judicial crisis since the Supreme Court of Appeals unexpectedly challenged the authority of the Constitutional Court this week. The highly politicised standoff highlights lingering Western worries about the rule of law in one of the Nato´s most strategic members.

The dispute revolves around jailed lawyer Can Atalay -- one of seven defendants sentenced last year to 18 years in prison as part of a highly controversial trial that also saw the award-winning philanthropist Osman Kavala jailed for life. The 47-year-old Atalay was allowed to run from jail in May´s general election and was elected to parliament as a member of the leftist Workers´ Party of Turkiye (TIP).

The Constitutional Court ruled last month that Atalay enjoyed immunity from prosecution granted to elected lawmakers and ordered the Supreme Court to reverse its earlier decision to keep him in jail.

The Supreme Court refused to comply and filed a criminal complaint against Constitutional Court judges who sided with Atalay. Erdogan broke a two-day silence on the emerging crisis by siding firmly with the Supreme Court.

“Unfortunately, the Constitutional Court has made many mistakes, one after another. This seriously saddens us,” he told Turkish reporters on board his return flight from a trip to Uzbekistan.

The powerful Turkish leader added that the Supreme Court´s request for prosecutors to investigate the Constitutional Court´s judges “cannot be thrown away or pushed aside”. Kavala was found guilty of trying to overthrow the constitutional order by allegedly funding a wave of 2013 protests that posed the first serious challenge to Erdogan´s two-decade rule.

Atalay represented the legal defence team of the people involved in those protests. Both men called the charges against them political and fictitious during the years-long trial. Erdogan suggested that Atalay could flee Turkiye if he were released.

“Such things have happened before,” he said. Turkiye´s parliament has previously voted to lift immunity from prosecution of opposition politicians -- many of them Kurds -- that the government views as “terrorists”.