Category: World

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been criticized by scores of social media users and a number of opposition figures for remarks implying that Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) displays its members who wear headscarves like mannequins for political gain.

The president on Friday slammed former culture minister and current CHP lawmaker Fikri Sağlar, who had said he feels uncomfortable seeing female judges wearing headscarves in court.

The party’s spokesman clarified that Sağlar’s views do not represent their official stance, and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the CHP’s chairman, also rejected Sağlar’s views, saying the CHP is not interested in how women dress in their daily lives, at work or even in the courtroom.

“Displaying some headscarved women like mannequins in order to get [more] votes in some places can’t deceive anyone anymore, that’s over. We have many members wearing headscarves in parliament now. Don’t you see it, Mr. Fikri? The situation is improving and you’re out of touch,” were Erdoğan’s remarks that sparked outrage among the public.

In response to Erdoğan, Kılıçdaroğlu emphasized that he should apologize to all women who wear headscarves for likening some of them to mannequins.

“There cannot be a grosser insult than this for a woman. What do you mean by calling them mannequins? It’s alright when they [headscarved women] are members of his party, but they are ‘mannequins’ if they are members of other parties. Does this make any sense? Why don’t you shut up and stop insulting people,” the CHP leader said.

A large number of Twitter users also criticized the president for likening women to mannequins and shared posts under the hashtag #ÖzürDileErdoğan (Apologize Erdoğan).

“A total of 386 women were murdered in our country in the past year. Just do your job and ensure women’s safety instead of shamelessly insulting them,” Meral Akşener, leader of opposition İYİ (Good) Party tweeted.

Sevgi Kılıç, one of the CHP’s headscarved Party Assembly members, said she “vehemently condemned” Erdoğan insulting a group of women that includes her.

“Doing politics by using women’s clothing is weak. No woman is a display item, whether she wears a scarf or not,”  Birol Aydın, the spokesperson of Turkey’s Islamist opposition Felicity Party (SP), told the Anka news agency, adding that the country’s main problem is the hardship women have been facing, not what they wear.

Future Party (GP) spokesman Serkan Özcan also spoke to Anka about Erdoğan’s remarks, saying that describing a headscarved woman as a mannequin was “heartless.”

“The ideology that aims to polarize people about everything is now trying to polarize headscarved women. This situation hints at the difficult situation they are currently in,” Özcan added, referring to Erdoğan and his government.

The Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) pledged to remove the ban on the wearing of headscarves in all spheres when it came to power in 2002 since civil servants and students were prohibited from wearing headscarves. There is now complete headscarf freedom in the country.

Erdoğan’s AKP government has been criticized by many for abusing the values and symbols of Islam for political gain.turkishminute

A deputy from Turkey’s far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), an ally of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), stated during budget talks that criticizing the Directorate of Religious Affairs amounts to providing support for what he called “crusaders,” in reference to a destructive, anti-Muslim mentality.

According to a report by the Birgün daily on Thursday, MHP Deputy Chairman Yaşar Yıldırım commented on criticism directed at Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate by opposition figures, saying that criticizing “the most important institution in the fight against the crusaders” amounts to showing support for them.

“That said, of course, the directorate has some shortcomings. Everybody in it, from the directorate president to the individual imams, should be careful about their behavior and attitude. This is because they represent Islam and Muslims everywhere they go,” Yıldırım added.

Yıldırım’s remarks came after Burak Erbay, an MP from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), reminded lawmakers that Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate has a budget of TL 13 billion ($1.6 billion), which is higher than that of seven ministries.

“Pfizer, which operates in 175 countries, has around 96,000 employees and BioNtech has 300,000. The Religious Affairs Directorate, on the other hand, has 131,789 employees,” Erbay added, comparing the directorate’s expenditures on employees to the well-known pharma companies.

The opposition MP also referred to the TL 90 million ($11.6 million) Harput Islamic-Ottoman social complex currently being built in eastern Elazığ province, asking why Turkey needs such a complex while the construction of houses for people who lost their homes in earthquakes has not yet been finished.

Erbay also mentioned an expertise center built by the directorate for TL 40 million ($5.1 million). “It has a [Turkish] bath and a steam room. You allocated TL 2.7 million ($348,000) just for the landscaping.”

The directorate has been criticized a number of times by opposition figures for its extravagant spending that contradicts Islam, which promotes modesty.

It has also attracted criticism for following mainstream Hanafi Sunni Islam and being “indifferent to the diversity of Turkish Islam” and for mixing religion with politics and openly supporting the policies of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) over the past few years.

In the wake of outrage on social media over strip-searches in Turkey’s prisons and detention centers, ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy group chairperson Özlem Zengin strongly denied the allegations and accused a deputy who brought them to the floor of parliament of terrorizing the legislature.

Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputy Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, also a prominent human rights activist, has been raising claims in parliament about strip-searches, saying the AKP government, which came to power demanding freedom for Muslim women to wear headscarves, is now telling women to take off their underwear.

“I have never believed in the existence of strip-searches in Turkey. There simply is no such thing,” Zengin said in an interview with Euronews Turkish service on Thursday.

A social media campaign denouncing strip-searches has been ongoing on Twitter, with many people, women as well as men, relating experiences of strip-searches during detention or imprisonment.

“Don’t stay silent against strip-search” was widely shared with the Turkish hashtag #CiplakAramayaSessizKalma by activists and women who were subjected to harassment in prisons or police custody. The social media campaign was launched to raise awareness about increasing reports of sexual violence in prisons towards inmates, detainees and also inmates’ family members.

Zengin said Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu has already responded to the allegations in parliament, accusing Gergerlioğlu of using “Fetö” tactics and terrorizing the parliament, by raising such claims.

Fetö is a term coined by the Turkish government to refer to the faith-based Gülen movement as a terrorist organization as the AKP government accuses the movement of masterminding a failed coup in Turkey. The movement strongly denies any involvement in the failed coup and any acts of terrorism.

“How on earth could this happen? And they are talking about religious women [as having been subjected to strip-searches]? I’m a person who has devoted her entire life to women’s rights. Can we tolerate the search of a woman in such a way? There must be some reason,” said Zengin.

Since the coup attempt, followers of the Gülen movement have been the subjects of a massive crackdown in Turkey, with the Turkish government and pro-government media outlets demonizing its members.

According to a statement from Turkish Interior Minister Soylu on Nov. 26, a total of 292,000 people 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 25,655 people in Turkey’s prisons who were jailed due to ties to the Gülen movement.

The women who were subjected to strip-searches are mostly those who have been detained or arrested on charges of terrorism due to their alleged affiliation with the Gülen movement. They include teachers, doctors and housewives who worked at Gülen-linked organizations or subscribed to a newspaper connected to the movement or made donations to a Gülen-affiliated relief organization, which are all considered evidence of Gülen movement membership, hence terrorism, by Turkish authorities.

Gergerlioğlu frequently raises the human rights violations experienced by various groups.

The most recent report of a strip-search he brought to public attention took place in the Aegean province of Uşak, where a group of female students who were detained due to alleged links to the Gülen movement were strip-searched before admission to a detention facility in late August.

Gergerlioğlu said the young women were still psychologically scarred from the experience as they were subjected to humiliating strip-searches during which the guards were laughing at them.

Since Zengin’s denial of strip-searches in Turkey’s prisons and detention centers, more and more women have shared videos on social media in which they related their experiences of strip-searches and how difficult it was for them to live with the trauma they inflicted.

Nur Ener Kılınç, a journalist who used to write for the Yeni Asya newspaper, after the launch of a social media campaign protesting the extensive use of strip-searches in Turkish penal institutions posted a video on Twitter on Wednesday saying she was harassed, abused and strip-searched in prison, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported.

Kılınç said she was strip-searched by four guards, who just continued gossiping and laughing as if what was happening was normal. “When I asked them if they would all be present during the search, they just laughed at me,” she added.

According to Kılınç, cases of abuse of inmates need to be known by the general public. “I know for sure that many women are too embarrassed to talk about their experiences, but it’s important to raise awareness for the sake of our own dignity,” she said.

Many women who were detained and subjected to unlawful strip-searches have come forward to talk about their experiences after human rights activist and pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputy Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu brought the issue to parliament and started a campaign on social media.

“Don’t stay silent against strip-search” was widely shared with the Turkish hashtag #CiplakAramayaSessizKalma by activists and women who were subjected to harassment in prisons or police custody. The social media campaign was launched to raise awareness about increasing reports of sexual violence in prisons towards inmates, detainees and also relatives of inmates.

Kılınç was arrested on March 6, 2017 for alleged affiliation with the Gülen movement, a faith based group inspired by Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen. She was in prison for nearly a year and was released pending trial. Kılınç sought asylum in Germany and was sentenced to seven years, five months in absentia.

Following a coup attempt on July 15, 2016, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency and launched a massive crackdown on followers of the Gülen movement under the pretext of an anti-coup fight. According to a statement from Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu on Nov. 26, a total of 292,000 people have been detained while 96,000 others have been jailed due to alleged links to the movement. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the abortive coup or any terrorist activity.

A number of women subjected to unlawful strip-searches in Turkey’s prisons have come forward to talk about their experiences in videos shared on social media, following a denial of the practice by ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy group chairperson Özlem Zengin, Bold Medya reported on Saturday.

Among those women are journalists, lawyers, teachers, doctors and housewives, mainly comprising women who have been detained or arrested on charges of terrorism due to their alleged affiliation with the faith-based Gülen movement.

One of the first women to speak out on the abuse she was subjected to following the launch of a social media campaign protesting the extensive use of strip-searches in Turkish penal institutions was journalist Nur Ener Kılınç, who was arrested on March 6, 2017.

The journalist said she was strip-searched by four guards, who just continued gossiping and laughing as if what was happening was normal. “When I asked them if they would all be present during the search, they just laughed at me,” she added.

Another woman who talked about her experience on social media was former teacher Birgül Koçal, who was dismissed from her job due to Gülen movement links and was arrested in 2016.

Koçal said she had been strip-searched four times: once when she was detained, once when she was arrested and on two different occasions when she was transferred to other prisons.

“I cannot remember any other time when I felt more humiliated as a woman and a mother. I’m ashamed to even talk about this. But it’s not me who should feel ashamed, it’s those who [unlawfully] carry out this practice,” she stated.

“Strip-search exists, and I’m one of its witnesses. I was strip-searched by two guards in the middle of the night at the Bakırköy Women’s Closed Prison behind a perforated barrier. The gendarmes in the room felt ashamed and turned their backs. They made me undress and squat,” said Hacer Koç, a 44-year-old housewife who was arrested in 2018.

Reminding that Zengin had accused Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputy Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, also a prominent human rights activist, of terrorizing the legislature by bringing the issue to the floor of parliament, Koç added: “The real terrorism is what you allow us to be subjected to. Though you may not believe it, Mrs. Zengin, these incidents are real. This has been going on all around the country, and I think that it’s happening on your orders.”

Betül Alpay Kocabıyık, a 26-year-old lawyer who was arrested in 2017 and sent to Muğla E Type Prison, said six or seven guards — only two of them female — told her to undress and then squat three times upon arriving at the facility.

“The worst sentence I’ve ever heard was when they told me to take off my underwear, too. It filled my eyes with tears,” Kocabıyık said, adding that she was then examined by a female guard who touched her upper body under her underwear.

“I was then allowed to wear my scarf and a hospital gown over my underwear. Then, they scanned my body with an X-ray machine. I’m calling out Özlem Zengin, who denies the existence of strip-searches. I’m one of the thousands of women who were subjected to that practice,” the lawyer said.

Another lawyer, Kübya Yiğit, said she was abused by a prison guard in 2017 who put her hand under Yiğit’s bra without asking for permission while searching her in Konya Prison when she went to see one of her clients.

“I’ve had scores of clients tell me about their experiences of strip-searches. We were in a visiting room while we talked about it, and those rooms are surveilled by cameras. If you listen to the conversations on that video footage, you can see inmates telling me about it since 2016. It is your job to investigate and stop this ugly practice,” the lawyer said, addressing Zengin.

Yasemin Baltacı, a housewife who said she was also subjected to a strip-search, added that she was pregnant when she was arrested in July 2018 and sent to Tarsus Prison.

“I was transferred to a hospital from prison to give birth. Following the delivery, I spent a week in the same hospital room with three male gendarmes. I’m having trouble even explaining the difficulties I faced at the time. I even breastfed my baby with them present in the room. Mrs. Zengin, I wish these stories weren’t true, but they unfortunately are,” Baltacı said.

Former teacher Tuba Özdemir, who was detained in August 2019 in Şırnak’s Cizre district, said she suffered mental trauma when she was told to undress and squat three times.

“That day was the hardest day of my life. I had a difficult time even shooting this video. But we are not the ones who should feel ashamed, it is those people who let this happen to us and then say in parliament that strip-searches do not exist in Turkey. Please don’t stay silent about this. Our silence encourages them to torture us more,” she said.

“I have never believed in the existence of strip-searches in Turkey. There simply is no such thing,” Zengin said in an interview with Euronews Turkish service on Thursday, denying claims initially voiced by MP Gergerlioğlu.

Gergerlioğlu recently brought the issue to public attention over a report about some 30 female students who were detained in the Aegean province of Uşak due to alleged links to the Gülen movement and strip-searched before admission to a detention facility in late August.

The Turkish government accuses the movement of masterminding a coup attempt in July 2016 and labels it a terrorist organization. The movement strongly denies involvement in the abortive putsch or any terrorist activity.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen gave some cautious optimism over the prospects for a post-Brexit trade deal on Wednesday, when she updated MEPs on the state of play in negotiations with the UK.

She said that while progress had been made on the so-called “level playing field”, talks on fisheries remained “very difficult”.

“As things stand, I can not tell you whether there will be a deal or not. But I can tell you that there is a path to an agreement now. The path may be very narrow, but it is there. And it is therefore our responsibility to continue trying.

“The good news is that we have found a way forward on most issues. But this is now a case of us being so close, and yet being so far away from each other,” she said.

The main obstacles to a deal have been EU fishing rights in UK waters, safeguards to ensure fair competition, and a mechanism to enforce a deal.

Von der Leyen reminded MEPs that an EU priority was to “establish robust mechanisms” to ensure fair competition with the UK in future, focusing on state aid and standards.

“On state aid, we have made progress based on common principles, guarantees of domestic enforcement and the possibility to autonomously remedy the situation where needed,” she said.

“On standards, we have agreed a strong mechanism of non-regression, that’s a big step forward. And this is to ensure that our common high labour, social and environmental standards will not be undercut.”

The Commission president added that she was “glad to report that issues linked to governance by now are largely being resolved”, referring to the question of how to police a deal.

On the other key obstacle, von der Leyen said the question of EU access to UK fishing waters sometimes felt impossible to resolve, but “we must continue to fight” for a solution.

“We do not question the UK sovereignty on its own waters, but we ask for predictability and stability for our fishermen and our fisherwomen,” she said.

Speaking later at Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons, Boris Johnson said that “whatever happens in the next few days” the UK would “prosper mightily on the terms” that are agreed to.

Despite many missed deadlines, the two sides have continued to negotiate even though time has run out for a conventional ratification process. Any deal must be turned into legal text, agreed by EU national leaders and ratified by both UK and European parliaments.

The UK left the EU last January and the transition period runs out at the end of the year. MEPs have expressed concern they could be asked to approve a post-Brexit trade deal with little scrutiny.

Failure to strike a trade deal would see the EU and the UK revert to basic international trading rules, increasing costs and disruption, and leaving arrangements on many other matters up in the air, from cooperation on security to scientific research. euronews

Turkish-German couple Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, whose biotechnology company BioNTech in partnership with US pharma giant Pfizer developed a coronavirus vaccine in less than a year, have been selected as the “People of the Year” by the Financial Times newspaper.

“The mere fact that a safe and effective inoculation is available less than a year after the genetic sequence for a new, pneumonia-like pathogen was released puts the achievement by Dr Şahin and Dr Türeci, who are the FT’s People of the Year for 2020, alongside the greatest medical breakthroughs of our time,” said the newspaper.

The US Food and Drug Administration on Dec. 11 gave emergency use authorization to the coronavirus vaccine developed by BioNTech and Pfizer, the first drug to prevent COVID-19 approved in the US. The US followed other countries, including the UK, Canada and Mexico, which have also authorized the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for broader public use.

FT, which talked about other coronavirus vaccines, said as creators of the first vaccine to win approval by two of the world’s most credible regulators, its award has gone to Dr Şahin and Dr Türeci, describing them as “the symbol of a remarkable scientific and business success story.”

Şahin and Türeci, the children of Turkish immigrants, do not appreciate being used as a political prop — with sensationalist headlines hailing them as the ideal migration success story rather than focusing on the merits of their research, according to the FT.

Türeci said she understands that the pair “tick a couple of boxes that people are interested in.” But she agrees with Şahin, who says he would rather “talk about our science” than the pair’s background.

The BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine uses innovative messenger RNA technology to introduce the body to the spike protein on the surface of the coronavirus. The vaccine has an efficacy of over 90 percent, according to early clinical trial data. The UK became the first country last week to begin vaccinating its citizens with the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine.

Şahin said that “we were nervous” as the first vaccinations began in the UK. Despite having seen their jab administered to more than 22,000 people in clinical studies across six countries, he said, “It is different when people are vaccinated for the first time outside a trial, in the real world setting.”

The couple crossed the billionaire threshold back in June, as BioNTech’s stock surged after its pact with Pfizer was announced. In late November Şahin joined the list of the world’s 500 richest people after the UK approved the Pfizer vaccine; according to Bloomberg, his net worth is now $5.2 billion.

Turkey’s state-run Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF) is selling two private passenger jets owned by companies seized from businessmen over their alleged links to the Gülen movement, a faith-based group targeted by the Turkish government, the Sözcü daily reported on Wednesday.

Ankara accuses the Gülen movement, a faith-based group invested in education and relief work throughout the world and inspired by Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, of masterminding a failed coup in 2016. The movement strongly denies any involvement in it. 

The government has been confiscating the private property of businesspeople with alleged ties to the movement without due process on unsubstantiated charges.

The TMSF is going to sell one of the planes, a 14-passenger Gulfstream G450 owned by a subsidiary of İpek Holding, seized from billionaire Akın İpek, who currently lives in exile in London, at an auction on January 8, 2021. The aircraft has an appraised value of $12,650,000.

Although Akın İpek lives in exile, a Turkish court in January handed down lengthy sentences to Cafer Tekin İpek and Melek İpek, former board members of İpek Holding, on conviction of membership in the Gülen movement.

Cafer Tekin İpek, a brother of Akın İpek, received nearly 80 years’ imprisonment, while their mother Melek İpek was given 12 years, eight months in prison.

The 13 remaining defendants were also handed down jail sentences ranging between two and 10 years.

The court ordered that the defendants’ shares in the company be transferred to the Treasury and that the board of trustees continue to run the organization.

“The only reason for what they are doing to us is money. There is no other logical explanation for what happened to my brother Tekin or my mother, who is in the last years of her life,” Akın İpek told Turkish Minute in a recent interview.

The other aircraft on the block, a Cessna Citation Sovereign, belonged to a company owned by Boydak Holding, a business group seized by the government in August 2016. 

The TMSF will be selling the Cessna on Friday, with an appraised value of $5,500,000.

Active in a number of sectors, including energy, furniture, and banking with 38 subsidiary companies, Boydak Holding has an annual turnover of more than TL 6 billion ($2 billion) and employs over 13,000 people.

In 2018 Boydak Holding executive Memduh Boydak was given a jail sentence of 18 years on charges of leading a terrorist organization. Hacı Boydak received 11 years, 10 months and Şükrü Boydak 10 years, both on charges of membership in a terrorist organization. Other executives, namely Mustafa Boydak, Erol Boydak, Bekir Boydak, İlyas Boydak and Murat Bozdağ, were given seven years, six months in prison each on similar charges.

The assets of thousands of people with alleged ties to the Gülen movement were confiscated or frozen by the government both before and after the failed coup. 

According to a report by Brussels-based human rights group Platform for Peace and Justice (PPJ), the total value of confiscated or frozen assets is $32 billion.

Cevheri Güven-turkishminute

Hidayet Karaca, a former Turkish TV executive locked up over the content of two fictional TV series, has completed his sixth year behind bars.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has failed to deliver a verdict on Karaca’s application, which has been pending before the court for five years. Serving an aggravated life sentence, Karaca has spent the last four years in a one-person cell.

Arrested on Dec. 14, 2014, Karaca is incarcerated in Silivri Prison, notorious for its large number of political prisoners. The Samanyolu Media Group, which under Karaca’s watch used to operate 13 TV channels and six radio stations, was shut down in 2016 by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as part of a large wave of shutdowns of institutions affiliated with the Gülen movement, which Erdoğan’s government accuses of orchestrating a failed coup in July 2016.

His case pending before the ECtHR for five years

Şule Karaca, wife of the 57-year-old Hidayet Karaca, is worried about the state of her husband’s health. An application filed with the ECtHR for arbitrary detention has still not been concluded after five years.

Lawyer Nurullah Albayrak, who is representing Karaca at the ECtHR, criticized the court’s failure to finalize the case and said he is afraid that it has a discriminatory stance vis-à-vis the case.

“We first appealed to the Constitutional Court, then to the ECtHR for unlawful detention. The procedure by which the ECtHR receives the opinion of the Turkish government and other parties involved in the case was concluded two years ago,” Albayrak said.

“In practice, the ECtHR delivers its judgment shortly after receiving the opinions of the parties. However, for some incomprehensible reason, the court has not announced a ruling for Hidayet Karaca.”

“Given the court’s significance in the defense and promotion of human rights, I don’t want to think that it has acted in a discriminatory way, but such a long delay leads one to think that. The lack of a judgment after five years leads to the belief that Turkey has been exerting political pressure that has impacted the ECtHR,” Albayrak said. “I hope that isn’t true.”

‘Karaca has been held in a cell for four years’

Engin Sağ, president of the International Journalists Association (IJA), said the grounds for Karaca’s detention was a threat to all TV executives as it implies that the authorities can arrest any executive or media staff on account of a script.

“With his successful management, Hidayet Karaca built Samanyolu into an international media corporation with 13 TV channels and six radio stations, broadcasting in four languages. His arrest was based on a fictional TV series, which can only be called absurd,” Sağ said.

“With a charge like that, any TV executive can be arrested. The suggestion that the scenario was a way of secretly communicating with other members of the Gülen movement is, in this age of communications, nothing but nonsense.”

“For the past four years, Karaca has been held alone in a cell. His lawyers, even Samanyolu TV viewers who protested his detention, were arrested. For a while, there were no lawyers to represent him. His son, who was in law school at the time of his arrest, has graduated and is now representing his father.”

“Karaca has had many health problems in prison. As the IJA, we have filed appeals with the ECtHR about his unlawful detention.”

Scenarios of two TV series grounds for imprisonment

Turkish TV series “Şefkat Tepe” (Compassion Hill)  and “Tek Türkiye” (Unitary Turkey) were two shows that used to rank among the top five in terms of viewership. According to the prosecutors, Karaca received instructions about the series’ scenarios from Fethullah Gülen, the inspiration for the Gülen movement.

The prosecutors alleged that a fictional criminal network in “Tek Türkiye” corresponds to a real-life religious group led by Mehmet Doğan, who is referred to by his followers as “Mullah Mohammed.” Doğan, who is known for openly praising al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, had been under arrest. The prosecutors in Karaca’s case alleged that the fiction in the show had paved the way for Doğan’s detention.

In his defense Karaca denied that he received instructions from Gülen about the scenario and stressed that the producer had included a disclaimer in the credits that the events portrayed in the show were not based on real people or events.

“I named neither the producer, nor the director, nor the screenwriter of the series. Hundreds of series are made in the TV industry every week, featuring hundreds of conspiracy theories. In these shows, states get overthrown, states are established, murders are committed and gangs are brought down,” Karaca said.

“If such investigations come out of fictional productions, it will bring about the destruction of the industry. Some US series have schemes involving infiltration into Russia or other countries and toppling foreign governments. I wonder if any of those ever became the subject of a terrorism-related investigation.”

In June 2018 Karaca’s trial ended after four years of pre-trial detention, and he was sentenced to aggravated life in prison.

At the helm of channels critical of the government

Fethullah Gülen, who lives in the US in self-imposed exile, has been Erdoğan’s number one foe since 2012. Erdoğan’s government first shut down Gülen-affiliated educational institutions, and then Samanyolu, which was led by Karaca.

Up until it was shut down, Samanyolu was one of the most government-critical media groups. Its TV channels were removed from the state-owned Türksat satellite after Karaca’s arrest. The group was ultimately dismantled by a decree-law in 2016.

Karaca in his defense argued that his arrest and prosecution were politically motivated and that they were being punished for their opposition. According to Karaca, the charges leveled against him were “even more fictional than the series.”

Dumanlı: The arrest was ordered by Erdoğan

Karaca’s colleagues held a YouTube event on the occasion of the sixth year of his detention. In the broadcast hosted by the Raindrops channel, one of the participants was journalist Ekrem Dumanlı, who was detained along with Karaca.

Dumanlı said his and Karaca’s detention were carried out upon the direct instructions of Erdoğan, citing a judge who was on the bench at the time. Dumanlı claimed that Karaca’s arrest on Dec. 14, 2014, constituted a milestone for Erdoğan’s crackdown on media independence.

Aytaç Ünsal, a lawyer who had until recently been on a hunger strike in support of his demand for a fair trial, was detained and arrested yesterday on charges that he was trying to illegally flee the country and was allegedly beaten by the police while in custody, according to his father Nihat Ünsal, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported.

Nihat Ünsal shared a photograph of his son’s battered face on Twitter. “We moved to a hotel in Istanbul to seek treatment for my son, who ended a hunger strike on September 3. But we were not left alone there as armed police officers raided our room,” he said.

Ünsal had been on a hunger strike for 213 days and was released from prison on September 3 due to health reasons and called off his hunger strike the following day.

The Supreme Court of Appeals conditionally released Ünsal “until he recovers” from his hunger strike. Although he had previously refused medical treatment, Ünsal agreed to it after his release.

His father claimed that the hospital was pressured into stopping Ünsal’s treatment, so they moved to Istanbul. “Please tell me as a father, where should we go to live?” he asked.

Ünsal had been in prison since September 12, 2018 on charges of membership in the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Army/Front (DHKP/C), which is recognized as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the EU. He was accused of “communicating the organization’s messages to captured members and acting as a courier” and sentenced to 10 years, six months by an İstanbul court on March 20, 2017. The case was based on the testimony of a secret witness who has been used by the prosecution in a variety of cases.

The People’s Law Firm (Halkın Hukuk Bürosu), of which Ünsal is a member, published a statement saying he was beaten during detention and that there were significant bruises and marks on his body. They added that Ünsal was not given his medication and that his arrest was completely contrary to the decision of the Supreme Court of Appeals as he had not recovered from his hunger strike. “Aytaç Ünsal’s arrest is unlawful, as he his continuing with his treatment,” they said.

The Turkish government has been accused of intimidating lawyers representing clients associated with dissident groups. In September, rapporteurs from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) expressed concern over the situation of lawyers in Turkey after what they defined as “a series of worrying developments” in a press statement.

“Lawyers should not be criminalized for exercising their profession, or convicted on dubious charges,” said Alexandra Louis, PACE’s general rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders in Council of Europe member states, and Thomas Hammarberg and John Howell, the two co-rapporteurs for the monitoring of Turkey.

In a 2018 report, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) highlighted “a pattern of persecution of lawyers representing individuals accused of terrorism offenses, being associated with their clients’ cause (or alleged cause) while discharging their official functions, and consequently prosecuted for the same or related crime attributed to their client.”

According to a report by The Arrested Lawyers Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to “defending the defenders,” more than 1,600 lawyers have been detained, over 600 have been arrested and 441 have been convicted of the charge of membership in a terrorist organization.