Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc and a senior figure of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) pledged new regulations to end the public perception of impunity in legal cases.
The “impunity” in question came to the fore recently after a young man who shot dead a policewoman in Istanbul was revealed to have walked free in an earlier case despite his lengthy criminal history. Similarly, a social media uproar broke out over the release of a famous couple for whom prosecutors asked for long prison terms on charges of money laundering.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has repeatedly warned against this sense of impunity. “Verdicts that do not address concerns in public conscience do not serve social peace. Unfortunately, we occasionally come across bad examples serving a sense of impunity. We are exerting efforts to minimize this,” he said in an address to prospective judges and prosecutors in the capital, Ankara, last month.
After a recent Cabinet meeting, he said the government, in cooperation with Parliament, would take steps to alleviate public concerns and instill trust in the state’s work among people on the issue.
Abdullah Güler, group chair of the AK Party at Parliament, told reporters on Tuesday that they were working on the matter. He pointed out that education programs for the incarcerated were already in place in prisons to prevent their relapse into a life of crime. “We will debate it in discussions for a new legal package,” Güler said, referring to an omnibus bill for judicial reforms. He also assured that Parliament had no agenda of pardons and reduction in prison terms for certain crimes as claimed.
Tunç told reporters on Tuesday that they were weighing changes on the period of parole and release with judiciary control, which requires the convicted to report to authorities regularly. “We may discuss removing judiciary control measures for some offenses,” he said. Tunç said the convicted are released without serving any prison term in some cases where the maximum prison term is too low and courts often rule for their immediate release.
“Thus, people think (the convicted) got away with it. To prevent this, we may introduce mandatory serving of prison terms, especially in minor offenses (where the convicted usually do not serve time). We already presented a draft regulation to Parliament to that extent,” Tunç said.
