Racism-Turanism trials

[1][2] According to tried pan-Turkists as well as researchers like Edward Weisband and Uğur Mumcu, the trials were plotted to improve the relations between Turkey and the Soviet Union.

[5][9] Journalists Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın and Mehmet Emin Erişirgil and other Turkish nationalists followed suit and also criticized the imprisoned Turkists.

Besides those mentioned above, notable defendants included Zeki Velidi Togan, Hikmet Tanyu, Alparslan Türkeş and Orhan Şaik Gökyay.

[11] The prosecution attempted to portray the prominent racist ideologue Atsız as not being of Turkish stock himself,[12] while Togan and Türkkan were accused of having been involved in the secret organization Gürem[a] allegedly established in 1941 in order to support an eventual alliance with Nazi Germany and liberate the Turkic people in the Soviet Union.

[14] Asked whether he acknowledged the existence of other ethnicities who claimed to be Turks, Türkeş confirmed it, but demanded their complete Turkification.

[14] Türkeş deemed the trial as an attack against Turkism and argued that racism was a part of Turkish politics since the time Atatürk was Turkey's president.

Many defendants, including Reha Oğuz Türkkan, Alparslan Türkeş, Hamza Sadi Özbek, Orhan Şaik Gökyay and others, were closed to coffin-like cells (tabutluk).

[19] While Fehiman Altan and the judge were discussing the torture, the general notice responded "We brought them not as guests; but as traitors, murderers, villains who want to overthrow the government.

[22] During the retrial, Kenan Öner, lawyer for the defendants, accused Hasan Âli Yücel of protecting communists, specifically in the Ministry of National Education.

Hikmet Tanyu released a little article on the tortures they faced and after his efforts, a case was opened against the prosecutor Kazım Alöç, martial law commander Sabit Noyan, İstanbul's security director Ahmet Demir, 1st branch manager of security Sait Koçak and many others.