George Orwell’s greatest act of genius was the invention of Newspeak, the official language of Oceania, devised to meet the ideological needs of “Ingsoc,” or English Socialism. Explaining the nature of a mass trial in Turkey likewise requires the construction of a language all its own. Of late, journalists’ trials have received particular notice in the foreign press, but only because the arrest of journalists excites other journalists. In fact, early-morning raids, mass arrests, detentions without trial, and mass trials are a common feature of the Turkish landscape—for academics, students, suspected members of the so-called KCK (the urban wing of...