Author: Zaman Australia

Seven Turks — two women and five children — who drowned when a boat carrying 19 people capsized on Sept. 27 in the eastern Aegean Sea, were buried on the Greek island of Chios on Wednesday, Bold Medya reported.

The boat was carrying Turkish academics and jurists and their family members who had to flee the country due to an ongoing government crackdown on followers of the Gülen movement.

The Turkish government accuses the Gülen movement of masterminding a failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016 and labels it a “terrorist organization,” although the movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.

The academics and judicial members were among the more than 150,000 public servants who were removed from their posts by the government in the aftermath of the coup attempt due to their alleged links to the Gülen movement. The government also revoked their passports.

Among the victims were 4-month old Mahir Işık and 3-year-old İbrahim Işık, the children of two judges, Fatma and Nasır Işık, who survived the tragedy.

Twelve-year-old Mustafa Said Zenbil, 40-year-old Meltem Zenbil and her mother 58-year-old Kevser Sezer were the family members of Oğuz Zenbil, who survived the tragedy with his elder son, Bedirhan.

Oğuz Zenbil was an academic at a university in Konya that was closed down by the Turkish government due to its alleged links to the Gülen movement.

The two other victims of the tragedy were identified as 6-year-old Mustafa Kara and 8-year-old Gülsüm Kara; however, there was no information regarding their family members.

The survivors of the tragedy attended the funerals on Chios, where local administrators also extended their support for preparation of the ceremonies and burial of the victims.

In the meantime, Turkish journalist Murat Sevinç, who writes for the Gazete Duvar news website, harshly criticized some Turkish media outlets and journalists who reported on the news of the boat tragedy, saying, “Fetö members drowned in the Aegean Sea.”

Fetö is a term coined by the Turkish government to refer to the Gülen movement as a terrorist organization.

“I feel really bad, dear reader. I feel so bad. I cannot accept what has happened to those children and their parents. I cannot understand who could write such news, how they can be so indifferent and how they can say, ‘It was well deserved.’ I cannot understand this level [of inhumanity]… I want to spit on the conscience of all,” Sevinç wrote.

US online streaming service Netflix has applied for a license to continue operating in Turkey under new online broadcasting rules, the head of the country’s television watchdog said on Tuesday.

The Netflix Turkey office also confirmed it with a statement, adding that they are in talks with the authorities to tighten parental controls on their content.

“Our goal is effectively protecting our children from content that is not appropriate for their ages while providing services for our subscribers’ enjoyment,” the statement said.

Netflix has around 1.5 million subscribers in Turkey.

Turkey’s conservatives have been criticizing Netflix streams for being against the country’s “values.”

Turkey last month granted its radio and television watchdog sweeping oversight over all online content, including streaming platforms and online news outlets, in a move that raised concerns about possible censorship.

Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) President Ebubekir Şahin also said on Twitter that more than 600 institutions, including local streaming platforms Puhu TV and Blu TV, had applied for licenses.

The new regulation stipulates that content providers should secure a new license to continue operating in Turkey and comply with RTÜK guidelines.

If they fail to respect the guidelines, they will be given 30 days to change their content or face having their licenses suspended for three months or possibly canceled. The announcement last month did not specify what standards RTÜK would expect.

Critics have said the move would allow the government to tighten its grip on the Turkish media, which is largely owned or controlled by supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ruling party.

The pro-government Sabah daily reported that Osman Karaca, a Turkish educator living in Mexico, has forcibly been brought back to Turkey by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT).

“Karaca was arrested on charges of ‘founding and masterminding an armed terrorist organization,” the daily reported.

Turkish government holds the Gulen movement responsible for the July 15, 2016 coup attempt while the latter denies involvement. More than 126,000 people have been detained over ties to the movement in Turkey so far while President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier called on foreign governments to punish Gulen followers in their own countries.

More than 100 people were forcibly returned from abroad so far, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

Speaking to media on the second anniversary of the July 15, 2016 failed coup, Cavusoglu said the government rounded up over 100 such people abroad and brought them back to Turkey as part of investigations.

“We brought back several leading F..O members from abroad. It made it into the news on some occasions and didn’t on others. We didn’t speak about some of those in the media at the request of the countries they were brought from. We can say that we have brought back over 100 leading F..O members from several countries,” Cavusoglu said

Former Deputy Prime Minister and Parliament Speaker Bülent Arınç, who is currently a member of the Presidential Higher Advisory Board, has described the purge of thousands of civil servants from their jobs in the aftermath of a failed coup as a “disaster,” offering his apologies to the purge victims.

Arınç’s remarks came during an interview on Thursday on the YouTube channel of Kemal Öztürk, the Anadolu news agency’s former general manager.

“There are so many people around me who suffered this tragedy. I feel sorry for them, I have sympathy for them. I am actually apologizing to them. I feel so ashamed when I see the woman who comes to my house to clean because she was purged as the director [of a state agency]. A police officer whose spouse, a fellow police officer, was also purged,” he said.

Turkey experienced a coup attempt on July 15, 2016 that claimed the lives of 249 people and injured a thousand others.

Immediately after the abortive putsch the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement and labeled it as a terrorist organization, while the movement has consistently denied any involvement in the coup or terrorism.

The government, which declared a state of emergency (OHAL) in the aftermath of the coup attempt, removed 150,000 public servants from their jobs through government decrees, known as KHKs, while 30,000 others have been jailed under the pretext of an anti-coup fight.

Arınç also denied having any role in the issuing of the controversial government decrees that affected the lives of so many people.

“They portray me as a person who played a role in the purge of the government workers during the OHAL period. This is a complete lie. … I left active politics during the June 7, 2015 general elections, I did not become a member of parliament. I withdrew from active politics one year before the coup attempt. So I have no signatures on the decrees and bear no responsibility for them,” said Arınç .

Arınç also said an OHAL commission established by the government to look into complaints from individuals who were affected by government decrees during OHAL was not functioning properly.

The OHAL commission rejected 77,600 applications out of the 126,200 it has processed since its establishment in summer 2017, according to a written statement from the commission in August.

After several years of a break from politics, Arınç was appointed as a member of the Presidential Higher Advisory Board by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in May.

A Turkish family under UN protection in Malaysia is being held at Kuala Lumpur International Airport by local officials who are planning to deport them upon a request from Turkey on accusations of membership in the faith-based Gülen movement, according to the Kronos news website.

Malaysian police on Wednesday evening detained Arif Komiş, who was an executive at the Gülen-linked Hibiskus International School, along with his family, the report said.

According to an official document on its website, the UN provided protection to the Komiş family on June 12 after they filed an application for asylum.

The UN in mid-August moved six Gülen-linked teachers from Mongolia to Canada after accepting their asylum applications due to imminent threats from the Turkish government.

In 2017 three Turkish nationals were detained and deported to Turkey by Malaysian officials upon a request from Ankara.

Turkey accuses the Gülen movement of orchestrating a 2016 coup attempt, although it strongly denies any involvement.

Since the failed coup, over 100 individuals have been brought back to Turkey from abroad, while many other countries, most recently Brazil, have rejected Ankara’s requests.

Turkey has been conducting a massive post-coup crackdown targeting Gülen movement followers.

The wife of 42-year-old teacher Özgür Doğan, who was arrested due to his alleged links to the Gülen movement, has called for the immediate release of her husband, who is a stage 4 cancer patient, Bold Medya reported on Monday.

Doğan, who was jailed in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt in July 2016, has been behind bars for 35 months in İzmir’s Kırıklar Prison. In March of this year he was diagnosed with lung cancer, which according to his wife quickly spread to other parts of his body.

Doğan’s wife Seyhan tweeted that her husband is not being released from prison although he is a terminal cancer patient. She said the courts were awaiting a medical report from the Council of Forensic Medicine to release her husband from prison although he has a committee report from the İzmir Katip Çelebi Research Hospital confirming his condition.

Doğan has been receiving chemotherapy at the Katip Çelebi hospital since July 31.

Seyhan Doğan, who is also a teacher but was removed from her job by the government due to Gülen links, said her husband cannot receive proper treatment and that prison conditions are making his condition worse. She said her husband has lost 13 kilograms in jail, dropping from 66 kilograms to 53.

Ahmet Doğan, a Turkish language teacher of 16 years, was removed from his post and jailed in September 2016 on terrorism charges due to his alleged links to the Gülen movement. He was given a prison sentence of eight years nine months a year and a half after his incarceration on charges of membership in a terrorist organization. His dossier is currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court of Appeals.

The Turkish government accuses the Gülen movement of masterminding a failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016 and labels it a “terrorist organization,” although the movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.

Following the coup attempt, the Turkish government launched a massive crackdown on followers of the movement under the pretext of an anti-coup fight as a result of which more than 130,000 people were removed from state jobs while in excess of 30,000 others were jailed and some 600,000 people have been investigated on allegations of terrorism.

Dutch police said on Thursday they had arrested a second man in the case of six people who were found in a remote Dutch farmhouse, which has been described as “isolated from the outside world”.

The individuals were discovered on Monday in a small “closed off” room on the ground floor of the house after police received a tip-off from a young man who said he was “worried about his family’s living conditions”.

“Today we arrested a second suspect in the Ruinerwold investigation,” Drenthe police said in a statement, adding the man was detained on suspicion of “unlawful deprivation of liberty”.

“The arrested person, a 67-year-old man from Ruinerwold, is one of the six persons discovered this Monday in the house.”

A 58-year-old man, who was paying the rent on the property, was arrested on Tuesday and charged on Thursday with unlawful detention and harming others’ health.

He will remain in detention for at least two more weeks, prosecutors said.

The Austrian Foreign Ministry said the man was an Austrian citizen, originally from Vienna.

The farmhouse is in Ruinerwold, Drenthe province in the northeast of the Netherlands.

A police statement said it was not clear whether the people found in the house were held against their will.

It’s thought they had been living there since 2010.

According to the police, those discovered said they were a family — a father with five of his children —all of whom indicated that they were aged over 18.

Local media reported the individuals have held apocalyptic “end of days” beliefs, but police could not confirm this information to Euronews.

They have been examined by a doctor and are being cared for.

The farmhouse is hidden behind trees away from the main road, accessible only via a bridge over a canal. Neighbours told regional television that no-one suspected a family was living there.

Some said they occasionally tried to approach the property but never entered. They sometimes encountered a man who was polite and had a dog.

Jans Keizer — who told RTV Drenthe he and his wife offered his new neighbour flowers and a bottle of wine upon his arrival — also said he subsequently thought things strange. “That gate by his bridge was always locked. You did not enter the yard. I once tried to look around with a neighbour one evening. Then we saw a camera hanging in a tree,” he is quoted as saying.

Police say they want to do their research “thoroughly and carefully”.

“We have started a Large Scale Investigation Team. Investigators are examining possible criminal offences under the leadership of the Public Prosecution Service,” they said in a statement.