Ankara prosecutor Bülent Yücetürk has resigned from his job to enter politics for the upcoming elections, accusing the judicial system of being “reminiscent of Hitler’s Germany,” according to the Sputnik news website.
“The Turkish Republic has entered a crisis of law unlike any in its history,” Yücetürk said in his announcement. “We are living in a period when courts’ verdicts are not being decided by the courts themselves.”
A former member of the Judges and Prosecutors Association(YARSAV), Yücetürk says the problems in the judiciary are far deeper-rooted than this, complaining that it has “lost its conscience and surrendered its might to a single power.”
Following the decision, he also appeared as a guest on a radio show, arguing that “Hitler told jurists in Germany to make their decisions according to what he would do in their place. Prosecutors in Turkey are acting somewhat similarly.”
He applied to become a member of parliament from the Republican People’s Party (CHP).
The Ankara prosecutor is known for his work related to an infamous sex-tape scandal that cost Deniz Baykal his position as leader of the main opposition CHP. Yücetürk ran the investigation of who leaked a secretly recorded sex tape featuring Baykal, finding that the scandal had been orchestrated.
The Turkish government has arrested a total of 2,431 judges and prosecutors and dismissed 4,424 others since a military coup attempt on July 15, 2016, a Constitutional Court general assembly ruling revealed in early August 2017.
