A new trial against the renowned forensic scientist and human rights activist Şebnem Korur Fincancı before the Istanbul 31st Criminal Court of First Instance began on Monday, initially without the defendant. The 65-year-old and her defence lawyer Meriç Eyüboğlu were, according to their own statements, unable to attend. However, as the court was not informed of this, the court ordered Fincancı's compulsory appearance. The hearing is now scheduled to begin on 27 January 2025.

Fincancı is accused of ‘belittling the Turkish nation’ under the so-called Turkishness paragraph. The background to the accusation is that Fincancı expressed suspicion of torture in the case of a man kidnapped from Kyrgyzstan. Orhan Inandi, a Turkish-Kyrgyz dual national, was kidnapped in Bishkek in May 2021 by the Turkish intelligence service MIT on the orders of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and brought to Turkey. The motive for the kidnapping: Inandi was the founder and president of the Sapat education network, which is associated with the Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, who is in exile in the US. Erdoğan's former ally is held responsible for the alleged coup attempt of 2016, and followers of his movement are persecuted worldwide.

After the kidnapping, Erdoğan presented a photo of Inandi showing him tied up in front of a white wall, flanked by two large Turkish flags. Around six months after Inandi's abduction to Turkey, further images emerged that were taken in a prison yard and show him with a bandaged arm. According to his relatives, he can no longer use his arm due to the violence and torture he suffered at the hands of MIT and Turkish police officers.

Asked for her expert opinion as a professor of forensic medicine and a leading international expert on the documentation of torture, Fincancı told the media that it was entirely possible that Inandis' injuries were the result of severe torture. The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office, on the other hand, sees this expertise as a ‘deliberate humiliation of Turks’ and submitted an application to the Ministry of Justice for approval of an indictment against Fincancı under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. Charges under this article are subject to the authorisation of the Minister of Justice. The ministry promptly complied with the request, which casually stated that there was no torture in Turkey. Ankara has been trying to silence Fincancı, who is considered an uncomfortable critic of the regime, for some time.

Article 301 is probably the best-known Turkish law in Europe. Until 2008, the section still regulated ‘insulting Turkishness’, but the law was reformed under pressure from the EU. The outdated version now states: ‘Anyone who publicly disparages the Turkish nation, the state of the Turkish Republic, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the government of the Turkish Republic or the state judicial organs will be sentenced with six months to two years in prison.’ The article is considered an extremely effective instrument against the opposition. Opposition members and unpopular intellectuals are repeatedly hauled before the courts in Turkey for allegedly disparaging Turkishness, in order to restrict freedom of expression and fundamental rights.

This is not the first time that Şebnem Korur Fincancı has appeared in court. The former president of the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) was sentenced in January 2023 to two years and eight months in prison on charges of ‘terrorist propaganda’. In a television interview with the Kurdish channel Medya Haber, Fincancı had spoken out in favour of an independent investigation into the use of chemical weapons by the Turkish army against the Kurdish guerrillas. An appeal against the verdict is still pending before the Court of Cassation.