Author: Zaman Australia

A New York City-based foundation established by two Turkish government-linked foundations has purchased an 81-acre estate belonging the late boxer Muhammad Ali and his wife, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The Turken Foundation , which was founded by Turkey’s educational foundations TÜRGEV and Ensar, made the purchase of the estate on the St. Joseph River in southwest Michigan for $2.5 million, it said.

The boxing legend’s wife Lonnie Ali first listed the estate in June of 2018 for $2,895,037, as a nod to Ali’s 37 knockouts in his career, it said.

The Turken Foundation, a nonprofit educational foundation established in 2014, beat a large number of hopefuls in acquiring the property, including a car collector in Barrington and possible buyers from Indonesia and Dubai, according to the newspaper.

The property includes a mile of river frontage, a full-sport basketball court, and an outdoor kitchen with appliances and grills under a barreled rooftop, a pergola, a gazebo, a fire pit, gardens and a waterfall rock garden, the Chicago Tribune said.

Turkish President Erdoğan’s son Bilal Erdoğan is among several family members and close friends on the board of TÜRGEV.

The Ensar Foundation, embroiled in a major child abuse scandal in March of 2016, has been criticized for its deals with the Turkish government in the field of education.

The murder of a 20-year-old Kurdish man in Ankara has launched a wave of accusations of discrimination in Turkey over the mistreatment of the ethnic minority, The Guardian reported on Tuesday.

Barış Çakan was visiting a park with a friend in Ankara’s Etimesgut neighborhood on Sunday night when he asked three men to turn down the volume of the music playing from their car during the evening call to prayer. The friend told police that an argument ensued and Çakan was stabbed in the heart and killed, according to a statement from the Ankara Governor’s Office on Monday. Three suspects were arrested.

Initial news reports quoted a family member as saying that Çakan had been attacked because he had been listening to Kurdish-language music. While Çakan’s father said in later interviews that the assault was not triggered by Kurdish music, the racial overtones of the killing have led to an outpouring of anger on social media, particularly after a friend and another relative stepped forward on Tuesday to say the family had been pressured to cover up the reason for the fight.

Hundreds of messages of solidarity have appeared under the hashtag #BarisCakan, as well as comparisons with the killing of African American George Floyd at the hands of US police, which sparked the protests currently raging across the US over institutional racism.

“Those who plant the seeds of hatred and enmity in the public and those who ban even the discourse on peace, this is the result,” pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) official Meral Danış Beştaş said in a tweet, referring to the policies of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Comments from Interior Ministry spokesperson İsmail Çataklı, who said the crime was not racially motivated and that focusing on the racial dynamic is the work of “provocateurs,” have also led to allegations of state hypocrisy over the treatment of Turkey’s Kurdish population.

An İstanbul court has requested the extradition of a Turkish journalist living in exile in Sweden for allegedly insulting two officers of the court in 2018, the Nordic Monitor news website announced on Monday.

Levent Kenez, an editor for Nordic Monitor, is accused of libeling a prosecutor and a judge at an İstanbul court in an article published on the Turkish-language news website TR724 in February 2018

The piece was published after the court had handed down aggravated life sentences to six journalists and media workers on charges of attempting to destroy the constitutional order. It included comments about the prosecutor of the case, Can Tuncay, as well as judge Kemal Selçuk Yalçın.

The court did not request a Red Notice for Kenez from Interpol, despite a Ministry of Justice suggestion. Nordic Monitor claimed it was due to the political nature of the prosecution, which is against Interpol’s constitution.

“I was not surprised,” Kenez told Nordic Monitor, adding, “It’s no secret that the government of [President] Erdoğan has engaged in a campaign of going after its vocal critics in any way possible.”

“Turkey is not a free country where one can enjoy the right to due process, and the judiciary is not independent. Tens of thousands of people from all walks of life, not only journalists, are behind bars on fake and trumped-up terror charges,” Kenez said.

Turkey is ranked 154th out of 180 countries in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a media freedom watchdog that describes Turkey as “the world’s biggest jailer of professional journalists.”

Nine civilians have been arrested while 15 military members were detained in separate police operations targeting alleged followers of the Gülen movement, accused by the Turkish government of masterminding a failed coup in July 2016.

As part of an investigation based in the central province of Konya, detention warrants were issued for 29 active and former military officers on accusations of Gülen movement membership. Fifteen of the officers were detained in police operations across 18 provinces, while operations continue for the detention of the remaining 14.

In another investigation based in central Tokat province nine civilians who had previously been detained were arrested on accusations of Gülen movement membership. They are accused of re-structuring the movement.

The Turkish government considers followers of the movement “terrorists” and has been conducting a large-scale crackdown targeting them. Interior

Minister Süleyman Soylu in March 2019 reported that more than half a million people had been detained by police in the post-coup crackdown over alleged Gülen links.

Yasin Ugan, who had been missing for six months before suddenly reappearing in police custody, has revealed in court that he was tortured by security officers, according to a prominent Turkish human rights activist.

Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a rights activist and a member of parliament, tweeted that Ugan had been tortured for six months after being kidnapped on February 13, 2019, with his head covered with a black plastic bag most of the time.

Ugan also said he was only allowed to take three showers during the time he was missing, Gergerlioğlu said.

Ugan, a former civil servant fired from his job by the government in the aftermath of a 2016 coup attempt, appeared in court on Tuesday over his alleged membership in the Gülen movement.

Turkey accuses the movement of orchestrating the failed coup, although it strongly denies any involvement. Since the abortive putsch, Ankara has carried out a post-coup crackdown targeting followers of the movement.

The İstanbul 34th High Criminal Court ordered an investigation into Ugan’s claims, Gergerlioğlu added.

Ugan was one of six dismissed civil servants who had gone missing in February of last year. They all were later found in police custody and put in jail due to alleged ties to the Gülen movement.

Yusuf Bilge Tunç, another former public servant who was dismissed from his job by a government decree, is still missing.

Gökhan Türkmen, who was allegedly abducted by Turkish intelligence officers and kept in a non-official detention center for 271 days, said in February that he was tortured, subjected to severe threats and sexually harassed and abused during his enforced disappearance.

The families of the once-missing men had conducted a social media campaign to find their loved ones during their nine-month absence, but the other five people, excluding Türkmen, who later reappeared in police custody, told their families to halt the campaign.

They were obviously afraid and apparently treated very badly considering their appearance, the families and lawyers from the Ankara Bar Association later told reporters.

Ugan also denounced a 58-page statement that he said he was forced to sign under duress by the security officers, and dismissed the lawyer who was assigned by the bar association.

Nearly 30 people have reportedly been abducted by Turkish intelligence agents since 2016. Two of them were able to flee the country and told foreign media about the torture they had endured during their enforced disappearance.

An American NASA scientist returned with his family to the United States early Tuesday morning after nearly four years of imprisonment and house arrest in Turkey, and more than seven months after President Donald Trump said he had secured an agreement for his release, The New York Times reported.

The scientist, Serkan Gölge, arrived in Washington on a commercial flight shortly after midnight, ending a tortuous journey for him and his family, who had become caught up in increasingly fraught Turkish-American relations.

At a White House briefing in November with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Trump announced that Gölge would be heading home and personally thanked his Turkish counterpart for releasing Gölge from detention, though he remained under judicial control for several more months.

Gölge’s case, along with those of an American pastor, Andrew Brunson, who was held for two years, and three Turkish employees of US consulates, one of whom was sentenced to more than eight years in prison this month, have been seen by US and European officials as a form of hostage-taking for leverage.

Gölge, 40, a naturalized US citizen, holds a Ph.D. in physics from Old Dominion University. He lived near Houston and had worked on preparations for NASA’s Mars mission.

He was detained in July 2016 while visiting his parents in southern Turkey and was accused of being a member of the Gülen movement — he insists he is not — which the government accuses of orchestrating a 2016 coup attempt, although it strongly denies any involvement.

The only evidence of that association that was produced at his trial was that he had held an account at Bank Asya, which was linked to the movement, and that a $1 bill was found in his parents’ house, supposedly a secret sign of membership.

Gölge’s wife, Kübra, and his two children, all American citizens, were also barred from leaving Turkey.

Gölge was fitted with an electronic ankle bracelet to monitor his movements and had to sign in at the local police station four times a week, a regimen that was later reduced to twice and then once a week. His case is still pending at Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals.

The last judicial controls were only finally lifted in April, and international flights, grounded because of the coronavirus pandemic since March, only resumed this month.

Haluk Savaş, 54, a leading human rights activist and a victim of a large-scale post-coup purge in Turkey, lost his battle against cancer on Tuesday, according to his wife.

“I’ve lost my angel-hearted husband who had been trying to help everyone,” Esen Savaş, a psychotherapist, tweeted.

Savaş was a psychiatry professor at Gaziantep University until he was fired by a government decree in 2016 following a coup attempt.

He was later arrested over alleged links to the Gülen movement, which is accused of orchestrating the failed coup despite its strong denial of any involvement.

In November 2016 he was released pending trial due to a cancer diagnosis, and after one year of treatment he was cured. However, the cancer returned in early 2019.

For months he struggled to obtain a passport, despite later being acquitted by a court, to travel abroad in search of a treatment for the cancer.

He was finally allowed to travel overseas last May, but the treatment produced no positive results.

Savaş was a dedicated and vocal advocate of other victims of Turkey’s purge and established a YouTube channel called KHK TV as well as several local platforms to amplify the voices of the victims.

Figures from nearly all walks of life in Turkey offered their condolences on social media.

“The government even tried to prevent him from getting treatment, but he didn’t give in and boosted our morale,” Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a member of parliament from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), tweeted.

“A brilliant man of science died today,” Meral Danış Beştaş, HDP group deputy chairman, said in a tweet.

Deputies from other opposition parties, former politicians and human rights activists also reacted in sorrow to Savaş’s death.

A professor of communications, Muttalip Kutluk Özgüven, has said followers of the Gülen movement, accused by the Turkish government of masterminding a failed coup in 2016, should be sent to rehabilitation camps and subjected to psychological treatment.

Özgüven’s controversial remarks came during a program on the pro-government Akit TV.

The Turkish government accuses the Gülen movement of masterminding the failed coup 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 600,000 people have been investigated on allegations of terrorism.

The professor complained that the fight against the Gülen movement is not being adequately conducted.

“This fight cannot be carried out only with law enforcement measures. We need to establish rehabilitation camps. We need to take Fetö [a phrase used by the Turkish government to refer to the Gülen movement as a terrorist organization] members who have not been involved in a crime to these camps and give them psychological treatment,” said Özgüven.

He also said these people had earlier taken advantage of benefits from the Turkish state such education, so they have to serve the state.

“Their bodies do not belong to them. They have to serve Turkey’s interests. So I can’t accept these people being against the state. We have not used psychological methods on them,” he said in remarks that attracted widespread criticism on social media.

Özgüven has been accused of advising the use of Hitler-era techniques for Gülen movement followers, who have been under unprecedented government pressure for the past several years.

The professor came under fire again in May when he said during another program on Akit TV that “between the ages of 13 and 17 is the ideal time to give birth. A person at this age is a super woman.” He said girls at this age have the perfect body for childbirth.

Özgüven’s remarks led to a public outcry, with many accusing him of promoting child abuse and teenage pregnancies in a country where such incidents are already common.

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Enis Berberoğlu, who was ousted from the Turkish Parliament along with two other deputies from a Kurdish party on Thursday and subsequently arrested, was released from jail on Friday under anti-coronavirus measures, while the other two deputies continue to remain behind bars, Turkish media reports said.

Berberoğlu was released from the Maltepe Prison in İstanbul. He will return to jail on July 31 to serve a remaining sentence of 18 months from a previous conviction of five years ,10 months.

Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the convictions of Berberoğlu, Leyla Güven and Musa Farisoğulları from the Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) on Thursday.

In a tense parliamentary session it was announced that the three had been expelled from office, thus stripping them of their parliamentary immunity. Berberoğlu was arrested in İstanbul and the two HDP MPs were taken into police custody in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır on Thursday night.

Güven and Farisoğulları have been charged with alleged links to the outlawed militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Berberoğlu with disclosing government secrets.

Following the release of Berberoğlu from jail under anti-coronavirus measures, HDP co-chairperson Pervin Buldan tweeted about the discrimination against the jailed HDP deputies and politicians.

“Of course we are pleased with the release of Enis Berberoğlu from jail, but doesn’t the coronavirus infect other politicians in jail?” Buldan tweeted.

The HDP is frequently accused by Ankara of having links to the PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the EU and the US. The party denies having organic links to the PKK.

Turkey has removed dozens of democratically elected mayors from their posts on terrorism charges and jailed dozens of Kurdish politicians.