Category: World

Önder Ateş, a former English teacher arrested for alleged links to the Gülen movement, died in prison on Wednesday of COVID-19, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported citing Bold Medya.

Ateş had been in intensive care for 17 days before he died. He was arrested after a July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey and had been held in Samsun Prison.

Another former teacher, Ersoy Karamustafa, died of COVID-19 on February 13, less than two months before he was due to be released on parole.

The rapidly spreading disease has presented greater concerns in Turkey’s prisons, which were already notorious for human rights abuses, overcrowding and unsanitary conditions before the pandemic. The death of those political prisoners revealed once more how the Turkish government puts their health in immediate danger.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, a faith based group inspired by Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since the corruption investigations of December 17-25, 2013, which implicated then-Prime Minister Erdoğan, his family members and his inner circle.

Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began to target its members. Erdoğan intensified the crackdown on the movement following a coup attempt on July 15, 2016 that he accused Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the abortive putsch or any terrorist activity.

In a tweet, Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, an opposition member of the Turkish parliament and a human rights activist, said he had previously raised the health of inmates in Samsun Prison with the Justice Ministry.

The Turkish parliament passed an early parole law on April 14 aimed at reducing the inmate population of the country’s overcrowded prisons due to the coronavirus pandemic. Yet, the legislation excluded political prisoners, including opposition politicians, journalists, lawyers, academics and human rights defenders convicted under the country’s controversial counterterrorism laws. The law prompted calls from the UN, the EU and rights groups for the non-discriminatory reduction of prison populations.

Following the abortive putsch, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency and carried out a massive purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight. More than 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors, as well as 20,610 members of the armed forces were summarily removed from their jobs for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations” by emergency decree-laws subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny.

According to a statement from Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu on February 20, a total of 622,646 people have been the subject of investigation and 301,932 have been detained, while 96,000 others have been jailed due to alleged links to the Gülen movement since the failed coup. The minister said there are currently 25,467 people in Turkey’s prisons who were jailed on alleged links to the Gülen movement.

A billboard in New York City’s Times Square that reads “STOP ERDOGAN,” referring to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose rule has seen the imprisonment of tens of thousands on politically motivated charges, has drawn the ire of officials from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Paid for by Turkish rights group Advocates of Silenced Turkey, a US-based nonprofit focused on addressing human rights violations in Turkey, the sign was branded by AKP spokesperson Ömer Çelik as the work of the Gülen movement, a faith-based group outlawed by Ankara.

Following a coup attempt on July 15, 2016, the Turkish government and President Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement, describing it as a terrorist organization.

Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, strongly denied having any role in the failed coup and called for an international investigation into it, but President Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” — and the government initiated a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.

“FETÖ [a derogatory acronym referring to the Gülen group as a terrorist organization] is an enemy of Turkey and hence our president. This treacherous network added to their betrayals by targeting our president with ads filled with lies. Their attacks on our president stem from their enmity towards our people,” Çelik tweeted.

Following the reaction from the AKP, the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said it had launched an investigation into the people responsible for putting up the billboard in New York City.

STOP ERDOGAN: Raise your voice for the grave human rights violations in Turkey. This is the heart of New York City. #Fight4WomenTurkey pic.twitter.com/zZDV1EeEON

— Advocates of Silenced Turkey (AST) (@silencedturkey) March 2, 2021

Kosovar authorities have indicted three individuals involved in the illegal deportation of six Turkish teachers to Turkey on March 29, 2018, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported citing Balkan Insight.

The three individuals are Driton Gashi, former head of the Kosovo Intelligence Agency;  director of the Department of Citizenship and Migration at the Interior Ministry; and Rrahman Sylejmani, head of the Directorate of Migration and Foreigners in the Kosovo Border Police.

Gashi and Krasniqi are both accused of “abuse of official position or authority,” while Sylejmani is accused of both “abuse of official position or authority” and “illegal deprivation of liberty.”

The six teachers — Kahraman Demirez, Mustafa Erdem, Hasan Hüseyin Günakan, Yusuf Karabina, Osman Karakaya and Cihan Özkan — were arrested at Turkey’s request over alleged links to Gülen movement, a faith-based group inspired by Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, and forcibly transported to Turkey.

Krasniqi told Balkan Insight he has been made aware of an indictment but has not officially received it. Sylejmani said he had not been informed about an indictment being filed against him, but was aware that he was being investigated.

Sylejmani added that both he and the Kosovo Border Police had acted in accordance with the law during the deportation process, stating that the institution was the third link in the chain following the Intelligence Agency and the Ministry of the Interior. “We performed procedures in accordance with the law,” he told Balkan Insight. “We’ll face this in court, there is no problem.”

Former head of the Intelligence Agency, Gashi was dismissed from his post following the illegal deportation of the Turkish nationals. The then-prime minister, Ramush Haradinaj, claimed the incident had happened without his knowledge.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement since the corruption investigations of December 17-25, 2013, which implicated then-Prime Minister Erdoğan, his family members and his inner circle.

Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began to target its members. Erdoğan intensified the crackdown on the movement following a coup attempt on July 15, 2016 that he accused Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the abortive putsch or any terrorist activity.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) concluded in September that the arrest, detention and forced transfer to Turkey of the teachers by Kosovar and Turkish state agents was arbitrary and in violation of international human rights norms and standards.

Similarly, a report published by a Kosovo parliamentary commission in February 2019 had found that 31 breaches of laws and procedures took place during the deportation. Members of the parliamentary commission authoring the report have accused former president Hashim Thaci of being behind the incident.

According to a report by Freedom House on global transnational repression Turkey has become number one among countries that have conducted renditions from host states since 2014. The Turkish government has pursued its perceived enemies in at least 30 different host countries spread across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia since a coup attempt in July 2016.

“Ankara’s campaign has primarily targeted people affiliated with the movement of religious leader Fethullah Gülen, which the government blames for the coup attempt,” said the report, adding that “[r]ecently, however, the effort [of the Turkish government] has expanded, applying the same tactics to Kurdish and leftist individuals.”

Prominent Turkish writer and journalist Ahmet Altan, 71, who has been behind bars for some five years, has failed to get a response to his efforts to get vaccinated against the coronavirus despite the fact that he is among the priority groups set by the Health Ministry, Turkish Minute reported, citing his daughter.

“Although he submitted a petition [to the prison administration] for the [coronavirus] vaccine, he failed to get a response. It appears there are no vaccines for Silivri. Does anyone have an answer for this?” Altan’s daughter Sanem tweeted on Thursday, referring to Silivri Prison in İstanbul where her father and most of Turkey’s political prisoners are jailed.

As of Feb. 11 people aged 65 and over began to be vaccinated, meaning that Altan should also be given the opportunity to be inoculated as part of his age group.

On Jan. 14 Turkey began coronavirus vaccination of its healthcare workers with CoronaVAC, developed by China’s Sinovac, against the coronavirus after the country’s health regulator, the Turkish Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency, issued an emergency use authorization for the vaccine.

According to a priority list announced by Turkey’s Health Ministry in January, the vaccines were first administered to healthcare professionals and pharmacy staff and then to the elderly and disabled as well as nursing home personnel.

Altan was arrested shortly after a July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey. He was initially sentenced to life imprisonment in February 2018 for alleged links to Gülen movement, a faith-based group that is accused by the Turkish government of masterminding the coup attempt.

The movement strongly denies any involvement in the abortive putsch.

Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals overturned the decision of the lower court that handed down life sentences to Altan and a group of other journalists who stood trial with him. Altan was a given prison sentence of 10 years, six months in a retrial on charges of aiding a terrorist organization, in early November 2019. He spent a total of 1,138 days in prison until his release on Nov. 4, 2019. He was re-arrested one week later and is still behind bars.

The European Parliament’s (EP) Turkey rapporteur Nacho Sanchez Amor on Friday criticised Ankara over a prison sentence handed down to opposition deputy Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu.

The verdict against pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputy Gergerlioğlu jars with the positive EU agenda the Turkish government promised, Amor said on Twitter.

New message from 🇹🇷 about EU “positive agenda” offer: tireless HHRR defender & HDP parliamentarian @gergerlioglueng convicted to prison. Umpteenth proof of sincerity of the supposed European bet. Hope @EUCouncil has received it crystal clear, as I did #GergerlioğlununYanındayız

— Nacho Sánchez Amor (@NachoSAmor) February 19, 2021

On Thursday, Turkey’s Court of Cassation approved a two year, six month prison sentence for Gergerlioğlu on charges of terrorist propaganda.

Gergerlioğlu, a human rights defender and a doctor by profession, was accused of sharing on social media an article, which cited Murat Karayılan, the second highest-ranking member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The article said that the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was ready to take steps for peace, if the rest of the country was.

Meanwhile, former Turkey rapporteur of the EP, Kati Piri also criticized the verdict against Gergerlioğlu in a tweet. Piri blamed Turkey for using the judiciary as an instrument of oppression.

Turkish Court upholds 2,5 years prison sentence for opposition MP @gergerliogluof. For being principled and outspoken on human rights.

Erdogan’s Turkey uses judiciary as an instrument of oppression. #GergerlioğlununYanındayız

— Kati Piri (@KatiPiri) February 19, 2021

Gergerlioğlu told pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya Agency that the court’s decision was politically motivated.

The HDP on Saturday issued a statement to denounce the court’s decision.

“We declare once again that we will not give up our struggle for peace and justice despite the anti-human rights and anti-democracy government. Gergerlioğlu is not alone,” pro-Kurdish Fırat news agency cited the HDP as saying.

Participants said it was unfortunate that human rights in Turkey, a candidate for full membership in the European Union, were violated in such a way.

The meeting was attended by Dietmar Köster, member of the European Parliament (MEP); Professor Bernard Duhaime, member of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID); former MEP Rebecca Harms; Dr. Dilek Kurban, of the Hertie School, Berlin; Dr. Rainer Huhle, from the Nuremberg Human Rights Center; and Öztürk Türkdoğan, president of the Human Rights Association (İHD).

The daughter of Hüseyin Galip Küçüközyiğit, a former bureaucrat who has been missing since December 29, was among the participants.

His daughter Nursena Küçüközyiğit said she contacted the police, who did not help them or respond to their questions. A prosecutor was finally appointed to the case 18 days after Küçüközyiğit went missing. Yet, according to his daughter, the prosecutor decided that there was no need to pursue legal action in the case.

Amnesty International issued an urgent call for action on February 1 for an investigation behind the circumstances of Küçüközyiğit’s disappearance.

Harms said states committed to the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should not be complicit in the kidnappings conducted by the Turkish government.

Nearly 30 people have reportedly been abducted by Turkish intelligence since 2016. Most of the abductions targeted members of the Gülen movement, a faith based group inspired by Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen. Many of the abductees mysteriously reappeared in police custody in Ankara after six to nine-month absences.

Apparently intimated, most of them kept their silence after their reappearance. Speaking at court hearing in February 2020, one of the abductees, Gökhan Türkmen, revealed that he had been held incommunicado at a black site in Ankara run by Turkey’s intelligence agency and subjected to severe torture during his 271-day stay. Türkmen was the object of threats and was sexually harassed and abused during his enforced disappearance. He also alleged that he was visited in prison and threatened no less than six times by officials who introduced themselves as intelligence officers, pressuring him to retract his allegations of abduction and torture made at the February hearing.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement since the corruption investigations of December 17-25, 2013, which implicated then-Prime Minister Erdoğan, his family members and his inner circle.

Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began to target its members. He intensified the crackdown on the movement following a coup attempt on July 15, 2016 that he accused Gülen of masterminding.

The families of Turks who were killed in the Gara region of Iraqi Kurdistan on Sunday as a result of an operation carried out by Turkish security forces against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) have expressed sadness and outrage at the Turkish government’s failure to ensure the safe return of their kidnapped children, the Sözcü daily reported.

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government on Sunday accused militants of the PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the US and the EU, of killing 13 Turkish nationals — mainly members of the security forces — whom they had held captive in northern Iraq.

The bodies of the 13 hostages were reportedly discovered in a cave in the Gara region of northern Iraq, where Ankara launched an operation against the PKK on Feb. 10.

The hostages, some of them kidnapped by the PKK as early as 2015, had found little or no coverage in the Turkish media, prompting widespread criticism on social media as to why the Turkish government had not tried to rescue the hostages earlier.

“They stalled us. I’m full [emotionally]. Politics should’ve solved this issue. It was the politicians, not me, who should’ve found a solution to this. I’m not the government. The politicians rule the government,” Gürsel Özbey, father of sergeant Semih Özbey — one of the 13 who were killed in Gara – told Sözcü on Tuesday.

The father said Özbey was abducted by PKK militants on the Dersim-Erzincan highway while he was returning home from the Black Sea province of Rize on Sept. 18, 2015.

“If what’s being said is true, the children [13 hostages] were tortured [by the PKK militants] every day. What kind of justice is this? What kind of world is this? This is where words fail. This is inhuman,” the father added.
He went on to say that nobody paid attention to him despite his many attempts to talk to politicians, including ones from the ruling AKP, who chose, instead, to stall him.

Another parent who spoke to Sözcü was Ayşe Güler, the mother of deceased specialist sergeant Mevlüt Kahveci who talked to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan over the phone when he called her during an AKP rally on Monday, a move that has attracted widespread criticism.

Erdoğan reportedly told Güler that she was “honored by the martyrdom of [her] son,” while she was unable to speak, sobbing over the phone. The president drew criticism for going on to propagandize his AKP government following the call, which was televised live by mainly pro-government TV channels.

When asked about the phone call, the grieving mother said: “I didn’t know he [Erdoğan] was calling me during a rally. I was at the cemetery. He called me out of the blue and we talked on the phone. He offered condolences, and I told him to take revenge for my son.”

The woman said Kahveci was abducted on the Hakkari-Çukurca highway on Sept. 21, 2016.

She also confirmed that a letter circulating on social media in her son’s name which stated that the AKP was responsible for leaving the hostages in the hands of PKK militants was actually written by him.

“Mother, the [PKK] organization says that nobody has asked them to return us so far. They say that if the president and his AKP were to demand it, they couldn’t not respond and would let us go,” Kahveci said in the letter.

“Why have they still not saved us? Why don’t they do anything for us? Which country’s soldier am I? Who am I serving? Why can’t they reason with the organization to save their own soldiers and police? What is our fault? Is this our reward [for serving the government]?” he asked.

According to a statement released by the Malatya Governor’s Office on Monday, among the hostages executed were air special sergeant Hüseyin Sarı, sergeant Semih Özbey, special gendarme sergeant Ümit Gıcır, special sergeant Mevlüt Kahveci, private Sedat Sorgun, private Süleyman Sungur, tank crewman Adil Kabaklı, tank crewman Müslüm Altıntaş, police officer Sedat Yabalak, police officer Vedat Kaya and private citizens Aydın Kose and Muhammet Salih Kanca.

Efforts to identify the remaining hostages were underway, the governor’s office said.

A secret report on Dutch national security that was leaked on Monday has revealed concerns among the authorities about the influence of what it calls a conscious Islamization strategy pursued by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for Dutch people of Turkish descent, noting that it could compromise the security of the Netherlands by giving rise to Salafism/jihadism.

According to the report acquired by Dutch monthly news magazine HP/De Tijd, the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism, a Dutch security body, writes that President Erdogan is implementing a conscious Islamization strategy that is having an influence in the Netherlands.

Erdoğan would give space to Salafist, sometimes jihadist, organizations with ties to Turkish-Dutch institutions, which could affect Dutch security, the service believes.

Salafism is an ultra-conservative movement within Sunni Islam, and a small proportion of its followers – known as jihadi Salafists – believe in violence.

According to the Dutch media, the leaked document points to a possible link between the “anti-Western rhetoric” of the Turkish president and the terrorist attack on a tram in the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands in 2019 that killed four people. A day before the attack in Utrecht, Erdoğan had spoken about attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, placing it “in a context of war between Muslims and Christians,” HP cited the document as saying.

The report, titled “The development of Salafism among Turks – the influence in the Netherlands,” was analytically incomplete and had not been signed off with other security services and ministries, NCTV said in reaction to the leak.

The document states that the Turkish community is “vulnerable to influence from Turkey.” The connections with Turkey are strong, and many Turkish Dutch vote for Erdoğan in elections back home. They are also associated with foundations that are in contact with the Turkish government.

Turkey’s pugnacious leader has traded barbs with European politicians on many occasions over their handling of Islamist threats, most recently with French President Emmanuel Macron.

“What problem does this person called Macron have with Muslims and Islam? Macron needs mental treatment,” Erdoğan said over France’s crackdown on various NGOs the country said fostered radicalization.

One of 13 Turkish nationals held hostage by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and killed in a PKK camp in northern Iraq on Feb. 14 had been purged from his job as a police officer under a government decree in 2018, according to Turkish media reports.

Turkey on Sunday accused PKK militants of executing 13 Turkish nationals, mainly members of the security forces, whom they had held captive in a cave in the Gara region of northern Iraq, where Ankara launched an operation against the PKK on Feb. 10.

Police officer Vedat Kaya, who was among the victims, had been taken hostage by the PKK in July 2016. He was suspended from his job in 2017 and fired in 2018 by a government decree as part of a massive purge launched by the Turkish government following a coup attempt on July 15, 2016. Kaya was among the more than 130,000 civil servants who were dismissed from their jobs on the grounds that they had links to terrorist groups.

An aide to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Fahrettin Altun, tweeted about Kaya without referring to his expulsion from his job.

“Vedat Kaya, a police officer from Mardin [province]. He was taken hostage by the PKK on July 24, 2016 while traveling with his family in the Lice district [of Diyarbakır province]. He was contemptuously martyred by the PKK on Feb. 14, 2021. May you rest in peace, my hero. We will take revenge for you,” Altun tweeted.

Many social media users posted messages about the irony in Altun’s message, which refers to Kaya as a “martyr” although he was expelled from his job on terrorism links.

“If you stay alive, you are a terrorist, if your are killed, you are a martyr,” tweeted journalist Said Sefa in reference to Kaya’s case, recalling that Kaya’s name along with his ID number was on the list of to-be-purged civil servants published by the pro-government Akşam daily in 2017.

In addition to losing their jobs, purge victims have been denied passports and according to many reports have been struggling to find jobs as they were stigmatized by a broader smear campaign.