Category: World

Nigar Kocabaş, a pregnant woman who in 2016 was interrogated by Chief Public Prosecutor İbrahim Keskin in the northern Turkish city of Samsun for affiliation with the Gülen movement, has claimed she was verbally sexually harassed by the prosecutor, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported, citing Bold Medya.

In remarks to Bold Medya, Kocabaş related how Keskin said her marriage was a scam and that her husband was not her unborn baby’s father. According to Kocabaş, claiming that she had “received instructions to get married and become pregnant,” Keskin said, “Your marriages and pregnancies are a scam, they’re a project! When will I be included and have my turn with you?”

Kocabaş’s lawyer objected to the prosecutor, saying his words were insulting, but Keskin continued demeaning her. “He said he would question me in front of my husband. He said we were rats and that they would find us no matter which ‘hole’ we hid in,” said Kocabaş. “He threatened me with prison where I would give birth to my child alone and raise him there.”

Kocabaş was detained and arrested in November 2016, a month after her husband was detained. She was subjected to a strip-search in detention although she was pregnant. The accounts of an increasing number of women detained on terrorism charges show that Turkish law enforcement officers use strip searches unlawfully and systematically to humiliate them.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, a faith based group inspired by Turkish 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. He locked up thousands including many prosecutors, judges and police officers involved in the investigation as well as journalists who reported on them.

Kocabaş had managed to become pregnant with in vitro fertilization (IVF), and she had to take medication as a precaution against miscarriage. She claimed her medication was not given to her in prison although she had cramps and bleeding.

Kocabaş was sentenced to seven years, one month in prison. Her husband was sentenced to eight years in prison and is still serving time. Kocabaş was granted release after the prison doctor said she was at risk of miscarriage.

Kocabaş said that in light of her ordeal she did not see a future in Turkey where she would have a just trial. So she decided to leave Turkey for a safer future for her son, who was born in 2017, and herself.

Erdoğan intensified the crackdown on the movement following a coup attempt on July 15, 2016 that he accused Gülen of masterminding. The crackdown also targeted political opponents of the government, Kurdish activists and human rights defenders, among others. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the abortive putsch or any terrorist activity.

Following the crackdown, many dissidents sought freedom from oppression outside of Turkey. For instance, in 2019 Turkish asylum seekers were the third most registered group after Syrians and Iraqis in Germany according to the country’s agency for migration and refugees (BAMF).

Turkey ranked second on the list of countries of origin of all asylum-seekers in Switzerland. “The increase in Turkish asylum-seekers is a consequence of domestic developments in Turkey,” said SEM spokesman Lukas Rieder.

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 Gülen movement since the failed coup. The minister said there are currently 25,655 people in Turkey’s prisons who were jailed due to links to the movement.

Cevheri Güven

Exiled Turkish businessman Akın İpek has said members of the Turkish government and judiciary who are behind the confiscation of his family’s assets valued at $10 billion as part of a government-led crackdown will eventually appear in international courts and account for their unlawful deeds.

İpek’s remarks came during an exclusive interview with Turkish Minute on Thursday.

The businessman was thrust into the spotlight again after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan publicly targeted him on Wednesday, saying that those like the “person in the UK” do not have the right to own property due to their links to the Gülen movement, accused by the Turkish government of masterminding a failed coup in July 2016. The movement strongly denies any involvement in the abortive putsch.“They don’t have such a thing as the right to own property. They owe a huge debt to the public. This person in the UK, how is he going to pay the debt he owes? He should return to this country. That is what we’re fighting for and will continue to fight for,” Erdoğan said before departing for a visit to Azerbaijan.

Living in the UK since 2015, İpek was CEO of İpek Printing House and Koza Holding, which were seized in 2015. He was also the owner of a large media corporation that operated two TV stations, two newspapers and a radio station which were all subsequently shut down by Erdoğan’s government.

Response to Erdoğan

According to a report drafted by London Advocacy, the combined value of schools, universities, dormitories, foundations and associations seized over Gülen-related investigations amounts to $35 billion, while the exact amount of assets confiscated from businesspeople is unknown.

Accused by Erdoğan of being a terrorist and denied the right to own property, Akın said the reason Erdoğan has been targeting him and his family is money.

“After the authorities failed to find any irregularities in our companies, they came up with the idea of appointing government trustees in 2015. In order to do that, they used expert reports that later turned out to be fake. As I am outside the country, my trial cannot proceed, and they are unable to confiscate my [personal] stock,” İpek said.

“My brother Tekin and my mother’s shares were insufficient to control the company, so they seized the shares belonging to Tekin’s wife, too. To be able to do that, they sentenced them all to prison, my mother to 20 years and my brother Tekin to 90 years. What’s the difference between that and capital punishment?”

“This is the burden that our family has to bear. This is why I say they are committing murder for money.”

Turkish prosecutors have issued detention warrants for more than 350 people in the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), the Gülhane Education and Research Hospital (GATA) and the Health Ministry in three separate operations due to their alleged links to the Gülen movement.

The Turkish government accuses the Gülen movement of masterminding a 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.

As part of the largest operation into alleged members of the Gülen movement in the TSK, Turkish prosecutors have issued detention warrants for 304 people, most of whom are active duty military officers.

In the early hours of Tuesday, police teams began to conduct raids across 50 provinces as part of the İzmir-based operation to detain the suspects, who are accused of communicating with Gülen movement members through pay phones to avoid detection.

The suspects facing detention include five colonels, one lieutenant colonel, one major, 10 captains, 58 lieutenants, 221 noncommissioned officers, seven special sergeants and one civilian. While 193 of the suspects are from the Land Forces Command, 111 are with the Air Forces Command.

As part of the operation at GATA, whose former name, Gülhane Military Medical Academy, was changed following the coup attempt, detention warrants were issued for 37 people, 31 of whom are doctors. The suspects include two professors, five associate professors, five purged colonels, one retired colonel, five purged lieutenant colonels, an active duty major, two active-duty captains and a purged lieutenant.

As part of the third operation at the Health Ministry, detention warrants have been issued for 10 Health Ministry personnel, who have been detained. The detainees include three currently working doctors, three purged doctors, two doctors who resigned from their jobs, one retired doctor and one nurse. The detainees are accused of having a bank account at the Bank Asya, which was closed following the coup attempt due to its links to the Gülen movement; and using ByLock, a mobile phone application considered by Turkish authorities to be a secret tool of communication among Gülen movement members. Prosecutors have reportedly obtained statements from informants concerning their Gülen movement membership.

The operations targeting healthcare personnel come at a time when the Turkish healthcare system is overwhelmed by the soaring number of coronavirus cases in the country.

Following the coup attempt the Turkish government removed more than 130,000 civil servants from their jobs due to alleged Gülen links.

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 Gülen movement since the failed coup. The minister said there are currently 25,655 people in Turkey’s prisons who were jailed due to links to the Gülen movement.

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

In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.

Muhammet Ali Taş, one of more than 300 former military cadets who were sentenced to life in prison for “attempting to overthrow the government” and allegedly participating in an abortive putsch in Turkey in July 2016, was severely beaten by six prison guards, the Bold Medya news website reported on Monday.

The incident was revealed on social media on Monday by Melek Çetinkaya, the mother of another former military cadet behind bars, who said Taş was brutally beaten by prison guards in Turkey’s notorious Silivri Prison, where most political prisoners are held.

“Military cadet Muhammed Ali Taş was beaten by the guards until he passed out. Our lawyer is on his way to Silivri [Prison] right now,” Çetinkaya said in a tweet addressed to Turkey’s justice and defense ministries.

According to the lawyer’s statements, which were also shared on social media by Çetinkaya, Taş was taken to prison guard Ramazan Kuyucu’s room after having an argument with another inmate on Dec. 4. He was severely beaten there by Kuyucu and five others while his hands were tied behind his back. The lawyer said Taş told him he was beaten until he lost consciousness.

Kuyucu reportedly swore at the military cadet and made fun of him, asking how he liked the beating while hitting him. The lawyer also underlined that his client was stripped by the guards, kept in a filthy room for two hours and then made to walk through the corridors of the prison with head down as part of psychological torture.

The prison authorities, who didn’t send the complaint filed by Taş after the incident to the Bakırköy Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office despite receiving it in a sealed envelope, also refused to speak to his attorney.

The lawyer, who found out about the beating after speaking to Taş’s family members, indicated that he saw bruises and marks of beating on his client’s face when he visited him in prison on Monday.

“Military cadets are currently serving time in prison on charges related to the coup attempt that they had no prior knowledge about. Now those cadets are allegedly being tortured behind bars. The Justice Ministry should immediately release a statement about these claims and punish the perpetrators,” Abdülkadir Karaduman, a lawmaker from the Felicity Party (SP), tweeted.

Speaking to ARTI TV, pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputy Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, one of Turkey’s most prominent human rights defenders, said he addressed a parliamentary question to Justice Minister Abdülhamit Gül, knowing that this human rights violation would be covered up by the ministry just like others before it.

“A military cadet who ended up behind bars at the age of 19 and who has been there for five years now is also being tortured. The cases of torture in Turkish prisons, unfortunately, increased in 2020. The prisons are being managed arbitrarily, and thus people have the opportunity and environment to beat someone they don’t like,” the lawmaker added.

Cevheri Güven-turkishminute

German authorities have taken action to deport a Turkish teacher, who applied for asylum in the country, to Turkey where he faces an arrest warrant due to his links to the Gülen movement, accused by the Turkish government of masterminding a failed coup in 2016.The movement strongly denies any involvement in the failed putsch.

Mustafa Kaşka is one of the thousands of individuals who had to flee Turkey to avoid a massive crackdown the Turkish government launched on the Gülen movement followers in the aftermath of the failed coup. The teacher, who applied for asylum in Germany on Nov.25 but denied an asylum, was taken from a refugee camp in the German city of Giesen on Tuesday by police officers and taken to the Frankfurt Airport for deportation. The appeal process for the teacher’s denied asylum application is still under way.

Kaşka, who had a nervous breakdown as he was being taken to the plane, saying he would be arrested if he is sent back to Turkey, was taken down from the plane stairs and taken to a police station in Darmstadt.

The teacher was the director of a student dormitory in the western Turkish province of İzmir. The student dormitory, where he worked, was closed down due to its links to the Gülen movement following the coup attempt. Kaşkar, who began to work as a teacher at a private school in İzmir, was later fired from his job in 2018 based on an order from the İzmir Governor’s Office due to his ties to the Gülen movement.

The teacher told Turkish Minute over a phone interview in the police station in Darmstadt that being a director at a Gülen-linked organization is for the Turkish government tantamount to being a leader in a terrorist organization as the Turkish government describes the group as a terrorist organization.

Kaşkar said he fears to be tortured in Turkey where there are widespread claims and reports about maltreatment and torture of the inmates in prisons.

“I know that those, who are tried on charges of terrorist organization leadership, are subjected to torture. That’s why I went into hiding in Turkey and decided to flee. I looked for a way to flee for months. I had to remain in hiding for one-and-half years. Then, I could finally make my way to Greece by crossing the Evros River on a refugee boat on Sept. 23, 2019. I came to Germany on Nov. 25, 2019 and applied for an asylum,” Kaşkar told Turkish Minute.

Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) denied Kaşkar’s asylum application but the teacher appealed BAMF’s decision at a Germany court and the appeal process is still pending.

The teacher said he cannot understand why the German authorities are seeking to deport him when his appeal process is still in progress. He said BAMF’s denial of his asylum application was wrong in the first place, because he handed over all the necessary documents as well as a decision by a Turkish court showing an arrest warrant for him.

“I am just a teacher. I did not commit any crime. I don’t want to spend my life in prison due to my political views. I am calling on rights organizations and the public to raise their voices against my deportation and I expect BAMF to examine my asylum case again,” said the teacher.

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 Gülen movement since the failed coup. The minister said there are currently 25,655 people in Turkey’s prisons who were jailed due to links to the Gülen movement.

Turkey and Russia have agreed to monitor a truce over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave from a joint peacekeeping center, the Turkish defense ministry said on Tuesday.

The deal came after talks between Turkish and Russian officials as to how the two regional powers would implement a Moscow-brokered ceasefire signed in November between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The two countries concluded the technical details for setting up the joint center and had signed an agreement, the defense ministry said in a statement.

The ministry tweeted that the necessary work was underway to get the center operational as soon as possible, reminding that on November 11 a memorandum of understanding had been signed via video conference by the Turkish and Russian defense ministers, Hulusi Akar and Sergey Shoigu.

The Turkish Parliament on Nov. 17 approved a presidential motion that sought permission for the deployment of Turkish troops in Azerbaijan.

The Turkish troops will be responsible for monitoring the ceasefire agreement that followed six weeks of intense fighting between the two countries.

The motion, which is valid for one year, leaves it to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to determine the number of troops to be sent.

Turkey’s Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSK) on Friday named 11 judges and prosecutors, many of whom played critical roles in government-led prosecutions, as new members of the Supreme Court of Appeals.

The list included Selfet Giray, chief justice of the Ankara 4th High Criminal Court, which ruled the day before on the most important mass trial, known as the Akıncı case, regarding a coup attempt in 2016. The court delivered life sentences without parole to 291 defendants and life with the possibility of parole to 46 defendants. Eighty defendants were acquitted of charges and 58 received lesser sentences.

Turkey experienced a controversial military coup attempt on the night of July 15, 2016 which, according to many, was a false flag aimed at entrenching the authoritarian rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan by rooting out dissidents and eliminating powerful actors such as the military in his desire for absolute power.

According to the Turkish government, Akıncı Airbase was the command center for the failed coup, and Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar was held there after allegedly being taken hostage by coup plotters. Everyone at the airbase that night was accused of taking part in the coup.

Gen Akar himself claimed he was held hostage at an airbase outside Ankara by the coup plotters. Yet, the CCTV footage of the night showed Akar leaving the headquarters and taking a helicopter without any sign of coercion. In one scene, Akar was seen asking one of his would-be abductors to bring his cap and the soldier rushing to follow his orders.

The courts have now concluded almost all of the 289 trials related to the coup attempt and have convicted more than 4,000 people.

Legal professionals have criticized the use of mass trials against thousands accused of even vague involvement in the coup, including convictions handed down to army cadets and others who were ordered out onto the streets that night with little knowledge of what was going on.

Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor Yüksel Kocaman, who ordered the detention of 82 prominent pro-Kurdish politicians last September, is also among those appointed to serve at the Supreme Court of Appeals. The detentions had come only a few days after Kocaman visited Turkish President Erdoğan at the presidential palace with his bride immediately after their wedding and received gifts there.

Another well-known figure who was selected to serve at the Supreme Court of Appeals is İrfan Fidan, the İstanbul chief public prosecutor. Fidan had taken over what is known as the December 17 and December 25, 2013 corruption investigations, which implicated then-Prime Minister Erdoğan, his family members and his inner circle, after the prosecutors and police officers working on the case were removed from their positions.

Fidan dropped the charges against 96 suspects including Bilal Erdoğan, son of President Erdoğan, four government ministers and Iranian-Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab, who later admitted in a New York court to leading a sanctions busting scheme that had helped Iran evade US sanctions with the help of Turkish banks, yielding Iran an estimated $13 billion. Zarrab also admitted to bribing senior politicians and bureaucrats in the process.

Radical Islamist Turkish daily Yeni Akit columnist Mehtap Yılmaz’s hate campaign targeting cancer patient Ümit Gökhasan and his release from prison delayed the medical treatment of the former police superintendent, who died on Monday.

Yılmaz had started a social media campaign on Twitter against Gökhasan’s release in May. Gökhasan was arrested on March 8, 2017 on charges of links to the Gülen movement, a faith-based group inspired by Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, and was sentenced to six years, 11 months in prison. His case was awaiting review by the Supreme Court of Appeals.

In one of her tweets Yılmaz called on Turkey’s Constitutional Court and Justice Minister Abdülhamit Gül to prevent the release of Gökhasan. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu were also tagged in the tweet. “Do not let FETÖ [a derogatory term coined by ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to refer to the Gülen movement] member Ümit Gökhasan, who was dismissed [from his job] by a [government] decree, be released,” Yılmaz said.

The Turkish president 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.

Following the failed coup 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. Over 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors as well as 20,571 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.

Gökhasan was first diagnosed with stomach cancer in January 2020. He underwent surgery on February 13, 2020 in which his stomach and part of his esophagus were removed. He was sent back to prison two weeks later and began receiving chemotherapy.

His treatment was stopped due to the COVID-19 pandemic, after which the cancer spread to other parts of his body. His wife tried to make his problems heard by authorities, but to no avail.

Gökhasan’s death was announced by his wife, Şükran Gökhasan, on her Twitter account. She told Bold Medya the details of his last moments. “My husband lost consciousness around 1 a.m., and he died shortly thereafter,” she said. “He suffered greatly.”

People affiliated with the Gülen movement have been facing discrimination, hate speech and persecution in Turkey since the corruption investigations of December 2013. According to the Stockholm Center for Freedom’s May 2017 report, “Erdoğan’s Campaign of Hate Speech Case of Targeting the Gülen Movement: 2013-2017,” President Erdoğan himself developed a unique vocabulary of 240 hateful slurs and insults that singled out the Gülen movement, including a malignant tumor that poses a great threat to humanity, blood sucking leeches, viruses, hashashins and lunatics.

Vilification and demonization of the movement reached its climax in the aftermath of the abortive putsch of July 2016. In a public rally in August 2016, then-Minister of Economy Nihat Zeybekci told thousands of pro-government supporters in front of the cameras that “we will make them beg. We will stuff them into holes, they will suffer such punishment in those holes that they will never see God’s sun as long as they breathe. They will not hear a human voice again. ‘Kill us’ they will beg.”

In a recent example, Sevda Noyan, a writer and staunch supporter of President Erdoğan, said on the pro-government Ülke TV last May that she and her family were caught by surprise in the July 15 coup attempt but that they were equipped for any similar future incident and could take out 50 people. Noyan also admitted that they had already made lists of the neighbors that they would target in such a case.

Muttalip Kutluk Özgüven, a professor of communications, went so far as to suggest that supporters of the Gülen movement 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 professor complained that the fight against the movement was not being adequately conducted. He also said these people had earlier taken advantage of benefits from the Turkish state such as public 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.

The COVID-19 pandemic has fueled this kind of speech. The pandemic is portrayed by the country’s pro-government “experts” as a tool of biological warfare, a selective or smart virus developed by Zionists, Westerners/dominant powers and people affiliated with the Gülen movement or the Rockefeller family in order to “subjugate intransigent countries to their will,” “redesign the world,” “launch chaos in the country,” “create ‘Lego’ religions” or “occupy minds.”

Any kind of negative development in the country is immediately projected on minorities and members of the Gülen movement. President Erdoğan himself made a habit of using the same political language whenever he found himself in a political bind. Dehumanizing a persecuted faith-based group such as the Gülen movement and others to this end is quite permissible in his playbook. SCF

Bahtiyar Fırat, a Kurdish man who had been missing since October 14, has re-emerged in detention at the organized crimes bureau of the İstanbul police and seems to have suffered physical trauma during his time in custody, according to his family, the Duvar news website reported.

His family said Fırat had lost a lot of weight and had marks of beating and torture on his arms and face. “We have been searching for him for 45 days. The prosecutor’s office claimed they did not know where he was, but we got a phone call on November 26 from a police station telling us that he was with them.”

The family also said they did not know why Fırat was held in detention. “He can barely speak because of the trauma he experienced. Whatever he has done, it does not justify torture.”

Bahtiyar Fırat, a school bus driver who lived in the southeastern city of Hakkari, was on his way to Tehran when he was detained by airport police at İstanbul Airport. He was told he was going to be handed over to Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT).

Fırat was released a few hours later but had already missed his flight. On the way to a hotel, he noticed his taxi was being followed by another car.

He immediately called his wife, Esra Fırat, and told her he was being followed and asked her to contact the public prosecutor’s office if she could not reach his phone. Esra Fırat said she had not heard from her husband since this last call.

Fırat said they were anxious about her husband’s well-being. “Even if he did commit a crime, we need to know where he is. We have been waiting for the prosecutor to give us details about his situation for a week,” she added.

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

Most of the abductions after 2016 targeted members of the Gülen movement. The Turkish government accuses the Gülen movement, a faith-based group inspired by Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, of masterminding a coup attempt in July 2016 and labels it a terrorist organization. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the coup or any terrorist activity.

Seven people went missing under suspicious circumstances in Turkey in 2019. Six of them — Salim Zeybek, Erkan Irmak, Yasin Ugan, Özgür Kaya, Mustafa Yılmaz and Gökhan Türkmen — mysteriously reappeared in police custody in Ankara after six to nine-month absences. Salim Zeybek’s wife, Fatma Betül Zeybek, was with him when three men in a vehicle forced them to stop their car and abducted her husband.

Apparently intimated, all of them except two kept their silence after their reappearance. Türkmen, however, revealed in a court hearing on February 10, 2020 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.

The other man, Yasin Ugan, also testified at a court hearing on June 23 that he had been tortured for six months after being abducted on February 13, 2019 by security officers, with his head covered with a black plastic bag most of the time.

One of the men, Yusuf Bilge Tunç, who disappeared in broad daylight on August 6, 2019, is still missing. All the efforts of his family and human rights defenders to find out what happened to him have proven to be of no avail.

The authorities have turned a deaf ear to inquiries from international courts and organizations concerning Tunç’s whereabouts, dismissing a UN query by saying that they were also searching for him while leaving questions from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) with an October 2020 deadline still unanswered.

According to Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputy Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, the government will not respond to the ECtHR’s queries as was the case with the six other abductees.

“They reappeared all of a sudden in police custody just before the ECtHR deadlines passed,” he said.

In a recent joint letter UN special rapporteurs expressed their concern about the “systematic practice of state-sponsored extraterritorial abductions and forcible return of Turkish nationals suspected of involvement with the Gülen movement from multiple States to Turkey.” SCF

A former air force cadet sentenced to life in prison on coup charges succumbed to bone cancer on Friday in a hospital in Eskişehir, Turkish Minute reported.

Yusuf Kurt, 25, a former student at the Turkish Air Force Academy, was among 70 air force cadets sentenced to life on charges of attempting to destroy the constitutional order by means of a coup attempt in July 2016.

Kurt was tried by the İstanbul 24th High Criminal Court and was released after sentencing in January due to his deteriorating health.

Melek Çetinkaya, the mother of another air cadet who was jailed for life on coup charges, announced Kurt’s death on Twitter.

Çetinkaya has been fighting for the release of cadets who claim they were unaware that a coup was underway as a putschist bid unfolded on July 15, 2016, when rogue soldiers failed in their attempt to take over the government after skirmishes with pro-government factions.

The cadets had said on the night of the coup they were taken to İstanbul in buses from Yalova and that they did not know they were part of a coup attempt.

The air force cadets said the only surprising thing on July 15 was an unplanned morning visit by Air Force Commander Gen. Abidin Ünal to their training camp in Yalova.

Turkish media reported claims that during a speech to cadets in Yalova, Ünal underlined the importance of carrying out the orders of their commanders.

Columnist Ahmet Nesin wrote on the Artıgerçek news website that during his unplanned visit, Ünal told the commander of the camp to cancel all training activities in the afternoon. “He told the commander, ‘Don’t tire the boys out; they’ll get tired this evening’,” Nesin reported.

After the July 15 coup attempt, various courts sentenced a total of 355 military cadets to life imprisonment for “attempting to overthrow the government.”