Category: World

İlhan İşbilen, a former lawmaker from Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), was hospitalized after contracting COVID-19 at Ankara’s Sincan Prison, the TR724 news website reported on Friday.

İşbilen, 74, was taken to Ankara Dışkapı Yıldırım Beyazıt Teaching and Research Hospital after his health deteriorated and is now reportedly suffering from an embolism.

Once a well-known businessman, İşbilen was diagnosed with COVID-19 in mid-September but was just put in isolation without being taken to a hospital.

Akın İpek, a businessman living in exile, criticized Turkish authorities on Twitter, accusing them of “attempted murder.”

“İlhan İşbilen, who is 74 years old and has been in isolation in Sincan [Prison] for years, has been hospitalized due to COVID-19. Friends! This is nothing short of attempted murder,” İpek tweeted late on Thursday, referring to the authorities’ negligence in the face of the pandemic.

İşbilen reportedly applied for release on probation numerous times due to the high risk of the spread of the coronavirus in the crowded prison. However, as an opponent of the regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, his petitions were rejected by the authorities.

Parliament passed a law in April that allowed for the release of tens of thousands of prisoners to ease overcrowding in jails and protect detainees from the coronavirus. However, the bill excluded inmates jailed on terrorism charges, including İşbilen and many others swept up in a crackdown following a coup attempt in 2016.

Jailed since the end of 2015, the former MP was sentenced in June 2018 to aggravated life without the possibility of parole. He was convicted of involvement in the 2016 failed coup, despite the fact that he was jailed long before it took place.

Turkey’s Constitutional Court rejected an appeal to release 74-year-old former AKP deputy, İlhan İşbilen, from prison. İşbilen was sentenced to life in prison in 2018 on charges of being a member of the Gülen group || https://t.co/usX0xSrJcI pic.twitter.com/wazXvni6ME

— Turkey Purge (@TurkeyPurge) April 14, 2020

İşbilen’s lawyers had appealed to the Constitutional Court for their clients’ release in March when the government introduced measures against the pandemic, over his chronic diseases and old age that put him in a risk segment.

However, the top court ruled against the demand of İşbilen’s lawyers, saying that the situation of the former deputy did not constitute an imminent risk for him to be released.

İşbilen was accused of links to the Gülen movement, a faith-based group inspired by Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen. The Erdoğan regime accuses Gülen of orchestrating the abortive putsch and labels the movement a terrorist organization. Living in self-imposed exile in the US, Gülen denies any involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.

The former lawmaker resigned from Erdoğan’s ruling AKP in February 2014 in protest of corruption investigations into the Erdoğan government at the end of 2013. While announcing his resignation at a press conference, İşbilen accused the government of surveilling him and his family, in reference to a bugging device planted by the authorities in his house.

His allegations were later confirmed in a report by Nordic Monitor, a Stockholm-based research and monitoring network focusing on extremism, terrorism, crime, foreign policy, security and military matters. The organization last year revealed official documents, including photos, videos and transcripts of phone conversations showing that İşbilen and his family were regularly monitored by the Turkish police.

Similar to İşbilen, another prisoner was declared brain dead on Tuesday after having collapsed in his prison cell on September 15, the Bold Medya news website reported. Cengiz Karakurt, a 41-year-old former teacher, was also behind bars on accusations of membership in the Gülen movement.

The teacher’s wife, Hatice Karakurt, was quoted by Bold Medya as saying that he was taken to the hospital several times but was sent back to his cell with antibiotics for treatment of a cold, despite the fact that he had reasons for his urgent release from prison, including having undergone open-heart surgery for aortic valve regurgitation. His release was only agreed by Turkish authorities a day after he was declared brain dead.

Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and a member of parliament’s Human Rights Inquiry Committee, criticized the AKP government over its inaction in the incident.

“There is once again negligence and violations [by the authorities]. The lives of prisoners should not be this worthless!” the lawmaker tweeted.

Siirt Cezaevinde riskli hasta grubunda olan ve günlerdir yoğun bakımda yatan KHKlı mahpus Cengiz Karakurt Covid 19 nedeniyle bugün vefat etti

Yine önemli ihmaller ve ihlaller var!!!

Mahpusların hayatı böyle ucuz olmamalı @adalet_bakanlik @ctekurumsal

Tek kişilik koğuştaydı!

— Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu (@gergerliogluof) September 22, 2020

Gergerlioğlu had also slammed Turkish officials on Thursday for another death in a Turkish prison. Ali Boçkan, an 80-year-old Kurdish inmate, died on Wednesday without being allowed to see his family for the last time, according to a report by the Gazete Duvar news website. Boçkan was imprisoned for holding a Muslim memorial service in his mother tongue of Kurdish, the report said.

“Ali Boçkan’s death took place under a government that claims to be religious for holding a memorial service in Kurdish,” the report quoted Gergerlioğlu as saying.

80-year-old Kurdish man imprisoned for speaking mother tongue dies of illness in Turkey’s east https://t.co/iw7swcCrfz @gergerliogluof aracılığıyla

— Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu (@gergerliogluof) September 24, 2020

Activists in European capitals over the weekend protested the Turkish government’s ongoing crackdown on dissident groups at gatherings coordinated by the European Justice Initiative, an umbrella organization for Turkish purge victims living in Europe.

The protests came after postmortem photos of Mustafa Kabakçıoğlu, whose lifeless body was seen in a white plastic chair in a quarantine cell in the prison where he had been kept for four years, sparked outrage among dissident groups, which thought the photos were emblematic of the plight of political prisoners in the country.

#Turkey Purge: Europe Protests Against Death of Mustafa Kabakçıoğlu, Found Dead in Solitary Confinement in a White Plastic Chair, & Against Turkey’s Mistreatment of Prisoners. For Photos & Videos Visit: @MAliuludag_ and @HumanDefenders1

Reference: https://t.co/W1l7ay4hNt

** pic.twitter.com/W54pI3pduY

— Linda Hemby (@LindaHemby) October 25, 2020

Rights groups in more than a dozen cities, including Paris, Berlin, Geneva, Malmö, Amsterdam, Stuttgart, and Bielefeld showed up with white plastic chairs to protest the ongoing crackdown in the country.

White Chair protests on the agenda of journalistsParis- Amsterdam, Istanbul, Stockholm, Berlin, Malmö, Stuttgart, Borås, Bielefeldhttps://t.co/pP49sPDem4

— European Justice Initiative @JusticeEuropean (@EuropeJusticeEN) October 26, 2020

 

“Today, we are saying ‘no’ to these violations, to [President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan’s dictatorship. We say ‘no’ to people being thrown into prison on trumped-up charges and killed without [receiving medical treatment] in prison. We say ‘no’ to children growing up in prisons. We say ‘no’ to the imprisonment of Osman Kavala, Selahattin Demirtaş, Ahmet Altan, Müyesser Yıldız, Ali Ünal and hundreds of other journalists and writers in jail,” a statement by the initiative said.

Kabakçıoğlu was a former deputy police chief who was removed from his job and arrested due to alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement.President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) government accused Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen and members of the movement inspired by him of orchestrating a failed coup in 2016 and embarked on a crackdown on the movement that saw the removal of more than 130,000 civil servants from their jobs and the imprisonment of some 80,000 people over links to the movement.Gülen and members of his faith-based movement, who refer to themselves as Hizmet (service in Turkish), strongly deny any role in the abortive putsch.turkishminute

 

The family of Bahtiyar Fırat, from the Kurdish-majority province of Hakkari, is concerned about his whereabouts after he was allegedly abducted by Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) in İstanbul on October 14, the Bianet news website reported on Monday.

The new case of enforced disappearance raised concerns amid an increasing wave of crackdowns on Kurds in which Kurdish politicians were recently arrested, Kurdish mayors were replaced by state-appointed trustees and use of the Kurdish language was considered dissemination of terrorist propaganda.

Fırat (33) was first detained by police at İstanbul Airport before boarding a plane for Iran. During his detention Fırat was told he would be handed over to officers from MİT. However, after his plane took off, he was released and told that it was a “mistake.”

Fırat called his wife, Esra Fırat, when he was heading towards a hotel in a taxi, telling her what he had experienced at the airport. He also said during the call that he was about to be detained again as four vehicles had surrounded the taxi.

Bianet quoted his wife as saying that the officers were the same ones who had detained him at the airport.

Before his second detention, Fırat told his wife to go to the prosecutor in Hakkari if she didn’t hear from him within a few hours. Prosecutors allegedly told his wife at the beginning that her husband may have been questioned by MİT. However, they later changed their story and said they did not know his whereabouts. Esra was told to “be patient” and wait for the results of an investigation.

“They [MİT officers] abducted a man who had committed no criminal offense [in the past]. I know my husband is in the hands of MİT. I am waiting for an official answer. They should tell me why they detained my husband. He was a school bus driver. We have relatives in Iran. He was going there. He had previously gone there many times,” his wife told the Mezopotamya news agency.

The latest incident points the finger directly at MİT as Fırat was the 30th person to have forcibly disappeared since a failed coup in Turkey in July 2016. Many of the victims were abducted in broad daylight by armed men and were missing for months. Some of them turned up in police custody after intensive social media campaigns to learn their whereabouts. However, four of the abducted men, including Fırat, are reportedly still missing, with Sunay Elmas and Ayhan Oran missing for four years, and Yusuf Bilge Tunç since August 2019.

Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, an activist and a lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), condemned the prosecutors for their reluctance to provide answers to questions about Fırat’s whereabouts.

“[And there is] another abduction incident. The prosecutor’s office has not done anything. There is no information. The same thing that we have experienced in other cases. Where is the Ministry of Interior?” Gergerlioğlu tweeted on October 19.

Correctiv, a German-based initiative promoting investigative journalism, presented a research report to the Council of Europe in December 2018 detailing the extent of MİT’s international and domestic abductions that mostly targeted Gülenists, a faith-based group inspired by Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen. The administration of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accuses Gülen of orchestrating the abortive putsch and labels the Gülen movement a terrorist organization. Living in self-imposed exile in the US, Gülen denies any involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.

According to the report, kidnapped people were tortured in extralegal confinement in centers called “black sites” in Turkey.

Gökhan Türkmen, one of six men who were forcibly disappeared in February 2019 and who resurfaced in police custody months later, claimed at a court hearing in February that he was subjected to enforced disappearance and torture. He further said that men who introduced themselves as MİT officers had visited him in prison six times to urge him to retract his allegations of abduction and torture.

In April Türkmen’s lawyer had also filed complaints about the MİT officers; however, the Ankara prosecutor rejected them, saying there was no need to investigate the allegations.

“The authorities should urgently investigate Türkmen’s allegations that he was abducted, tortured, and pressured to remain silent, and ensure that he and his family are protected against reprisals for speaking out,” Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said at the time in reaction to the prosecutor.

The five other abducted men –- Mustafa Yılmaz, Salim Zeybek, Özgür Kaya, Yasin Ugan and Erkan Irmak –- have remained silent so far.

Following Fırat’s disappearance, critics referred to “White Toros” cases in the 1990s when thousands of Kurds were suddenly disappeared, allegedly by members of the dreaded Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism Organization (JİTEM). The incidents were named after an old vehicle model, the Toros, because it was used in the abductions. The term symbolized the embodiment of fear of the state at the time. Today, “black Transporter vans” have replaced Toros cars as they have reportedly been used by MİT for the same purpose.

Baku will use Turkish F-16 fighter jets in the event of foreign aggression against Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Monday.

The country has been embroiled in a decades-long conflict with a defacto Armenian state in Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory.

Sporadic clashes turned into an Azerbaijani onslaught on September 27, after both sides accused each other of firing the first shots.

Aliyev acknowledged the presence of Turkish F-16s in Azerbaijan during an interview with CNN Türk on October 10, saying they had arrived for joint military exercises before the heated battle and had to remain there after the maneuvers.

“I am tired of answering. You have satellites — don’t you know what we’re doing? Look around — F-16s are on the ground. Everyone knows they’re on the ground, that they arrived here for the exercises, but with the beginning of the war, they stayed here, “Aliyev said on Monday.

“If any unexpected move comes from Armenia, Turkey will not hesitate to send its soldiers, should Azerbaijan ask for them,” Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said during a live broadcast on Wednesday.

Turkey’s defense exports to Azerbaijan had sextupled over the course of nine months in 2020 before the Azerbaijani army engaged with Armenian forces, Deutsche Welle reported on October 14, citing Turkish Exporters Assembly (TİM) data.

According to the TİM data, Turkey exported $123 million in defense and aerospace equipment in the first nine months of 2020. The figure was $20.7 million in the same period of 2019.

Russian news website Kommersant reported on Friday that Turkey is already embroiled in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.

“We are talking about 600 soldiers, including a battalion tactical group of 200 people, 50 instructors in Nakhijevan, 90 military advisers in Baku, 120 air-technical personnel at the Gabala airbase, 20 drone operators at the Dallar airfield, 50 instructors at the Yevlakh airfield, 50 instructors in the 4th Army Corps (Pirekeshkul) and 20 people at the naval base and the Heydar Aliyev Military School in Baku,” Kommersant claimed.

Turkey has backed Muslim-majority Azerbaijan in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory inside Azerbaijan where the population is predominantly ethnic Armenian. The region declared independence in 1991 under the name of the Republic of Artsakh; a state deemed illegitimate by the international community.

Cevheri Güven-

“They [police officers] were torturing me as if they were performing a religious duty, just like ISIL [Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant] does.”

Mehmet Eren, a former teacher exposed to torture that involved beatings, electric shock and a feigned rape in a police station in Turkey, used these words to describe what he had undergone after being detained in the aftermath of a coup attempt in 2016.

Detained over links to the faith-based Gulen movement, Even spoke to Turkish Minute about the severe torture he was subjected to while in detention at Turkey’s Afyon Police Department for nine days following the 2016 failed coup.

Eren was detained for the first time on April 23, 2016 for being the manager of a dormitory in Turkey’s Afyon province that belonged to the Gulen movement and was released after 73 days in jail without being subjected to any kind of maltreatment.

“But everything changed after the coup attempt on July 15, 2016,” the 37-year-old Eren told Turkish Minute, referring to his second detention on October 15, 2016 as well as to his affiliation with the faith-based movement.

Inspired by Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, the Gülen movement is labeled by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) as a “terrorist organization” and is accused of masterminding the failed coup in July 2016.

Although Gülen and members of the movement strongly deny involvement in the abortive putsch or any terrorist activity, Ankara has been conducting a large-scale crackdown targeting them.

“After the detention, I was kept alone in a cell for five days. I was then sent to the anti-terror unit upstairs at 9:30 a.m. on October 20. I was brought in front of the office of a police officer named Teoman Yaman and told to wait, standing with my face against the wall and leaning my head on it. Teoman Yaman told me to come in and tell him everything I knew or that I should accept everything he said. When I told him I was innocent, he made me wait again. I don’t know how many hours I waited in that position,” Eren said.

He added that Yaman threatened to torture him to death when he called him into his office again.

“He threatened me, saying, ‘You cannot survive here. If you don’t talk, I will call for the torture team from MİT [National Intelligence Organization].’ I could hear the screams of other people being interrogated [with acts of torture]. It was frightening.”

The former teacher said a younger police officer took him out of the room and started banging his head against the wall while shouting some words at him that he was unable to understand before he was made to return to the room again.

Eren elaborated on police officer Yaman’s repeated threats to torture both him and his wife.

“He told me, ‘We rented an empty factory for torture. If you refuse to talk, we’ll take you there, strip you naked and rape you with a truncheon. We’ll do the same with your wife, too. We’re expecting two torture officers from MİT. They’re animals, and I won’t be able keep them away from your wife.’ He then let me out again to think, and I waited for a few more hours.”

When he was back in the room, Eren said he was asked to reveal the names of people who gave him orders about the coup attempt, and the police officers refused to listen to him when he tried to explain he was just a teacher with no connection to the abortive putsch.

“Two people came into Teoman Yaman’s room soon afterward. One of them asked what my profession was and slapped me in the face and swore when I told him I was a teacher. The other one pulled my hair and started punching me in the temples, saying, ‘I will do the same to your wife. I’ll send your child to an orphanage so that she won’t turn out to be a terrorist like you’,” Eren said.

Eren also told Turkish Minute that another police officer named Barış came into the room and threatened him with rape before the other officers continued to torture him by putting a plastic bag on his head.

“They laughed at me when I said I couldn’t breathe. I fell to the floor when they let me go. Then, someone came into the room. I was on the floor and I felt pain in my leg so acute that I thought they had stabbed me.”

The former teacher said he realized electric shock was being applied only after the officers repeated it on other parts of his body.

“They applied electric shock to my back, kidneys, sexual organ and testicles. I remained on the floor for a while.”

Eren said the hours-long torture he was exposed to then turned into a feigned rape that made him lose consciousness by the police officer named Barış, who had threatened him with it earlier.

“They picked me up and made me lean my hands on the wall. The plastic bag was still on my head. Barış started to pull down my pants from behind. I grabbed one side of my pants with the other hand still against the wall. My feet were trembling while I was screaming, ‘Don’t do this.’ They shocked my hand and I fell to the floor. I was no longer able to stand.”

Eren went on to say that what scared him the most was the officers’ understanding of torture as some kind of religious obligation.

“When I regained consciousness and told them I wanted to pray, they said, ‘Do you think we don’t perform prayers just because we do this?’ I said my prayer and so did they. That was what scared me the most. They tortured me as if it were a religious duty, just like ISIL does.”

According to Eren, the torture that began around 9:30 in the morning ended at 9 p.m., and he was allowed to go back to his cell only after signing a statement given to him by the officers without the presence of his lawyer.

“Three or four days later, they took me upstairs again, but this time to the office of Talat Eryılmaz, where I saw my wife and my daughter. They said they were going to interrogate my wife while my daughter was crying, ‘Dad, get us out of here.’ Then the lawyer came and told me to ‘accept anything they say’ and he went to see my wife.”

“One of the officers who tortured me implied he could hurt my daughter sexually, telling me that he realized how grown up my daughter was,” he added.

Four days later, Eren was referred to Afyon Deputy Chief Public Prosecutor Osman Çabuk but decided not to tell him about the torture he endured because he thought Çabuk already knew about it.

After hiding in Turkey for two-and-a-half years following his release, Eren fled to Greece with his wife and daughter. They then moved on to Germany, where they now live as refugees.

Eren says he still has nightmares about the torture a few times a week and feels uneasy around police officers.

Emphasizing that he will do anything he can to have the Turkish police officers who used torture tried in both local and international courts, the former teacher urged all the victims of police torture in Turkey to speak out about it.

Eren is one of the thousands of teachers who were removed from state jobs and arrested as part of a massive crackdown launched by the Turkish government on the Gülen movement in the aftermath of the 2016 coup attempt.

Since then, there have been widespread claims of torture in Turkey’s prisons and detention centers that have so far gone uninvestigated.

Police officers threatened me with sexually assaulting my daughter, who was brought with my wife for interrogation, said Mehmet Eren when talking about the brutal torture and inhuman treatment he was subjected to at the Afyon Police Department.

Speaking to Cevheri Güven of Turkish Minute, Eren, a former teacher, talked about how he was exposed to torture that involved beatings, electric shock and a feigned rape at a police station in Turkey after being detained in the aftermath of a coup attempt in 2016.

Eren was detained for the first time on April 23, 2016 for being the manager of a private dormitory in Turkey’s Afyon province affiliated with the Gülen movement and was released after 73 days in jail without being subjected to any kind of maltreatment.

“But everything changed after the coup attempt on July 15, 2016,” the 37-year-old Eren told Turkish Minute, referring to his second detention on October 15, 2016 as well as to his affiliation with the 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. The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.

Following the coup attempt, 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. Over 540,000 people were detained on terrorism-related charges, more than 80,000 were arrested or imprisoned and over 150,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors, were summarily removed from their jobs for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations.”

“After the detention, I was kept alone in a cell for five days. I was then sent to the anti-terror unit upstairs at 9:30 a.m. on October 20. I was brought in front of the office of a police officer named Teoman Yaman and told to wait, standing with my face against the wall and leaning my head on it. Teoman Yaman told me to come in and tell him everything I knew or that I should accept everything he said. When I told him I was innocent, he made me wait again. I don’t know how many hours I waited in that position,” Eren said.

He added that Yaman threatened to torture him to death when he called him into his office again.

“He threatened me, saying, ‘You cannot survive here. If you don’t talk, I will call for the torture team from MİT [National Intelligence Organization].’ I could hear the screams of other people being interrogated [with acts of torture]. It was frightening.”

The former teacher said a younger police officer took him out of the room and started banging his head against the wall while shouting some words at him that he was unable to understand before he was made to return to the room again.

Eren elaborated on police officer Yaman’s repeated threats to torture both him and his wife.

“He told me, ‘We rented an empty factory for torture. If you refuse to talk, we’ll take you there, strip you naked and rape you with a truncheon. We’ll do the same with your wife, too. We’re expecting two torture officers from MİT. They’re animals, and I won’t be able keep them away from your wife.’ He then let me out again to think, and I waited for a few more hours.”

When he was back in the room, Eren said he was asked to reveal the names of people who gave him orders about the coup attempt, and the police officers refused to listen to him when he tried to explain he was just a teacher with no connection to the abortive putsch.

“Two people came into Teoman Yaman’s room soon afterward. One of them asked what my profession was and slapped me in the face and swore when I told him I was a teacher. The other one pulled my hair and started punching me in the temples, saying, ‘I will do the same to your wife. I’ll send your child to an orphanage so that she won’t turn out to be a terrorist like you’,” Eren said.

Eren also told Turkish Minute that another police officer named Barış came into the room and threatened him with rape before the other officers continued to torture him by putting a plastic bag on his head.

“They laughed at me when I said I couldn’t breathe. I fell to the floor when they let me go. Then, someone came into the room. I was on the floor and I felt pain in my leg so acute that I thought they had stabbed me.”

The former teacher said he realized electric shock was being applied only after the officers repeated it on other parts of his body.

“They applied electric shock to my back, kidneys, sexual organ and testicles. I remained on the floor for a while.”

Eren said the hours-long torture he was exposed to then turned into a feigned rape that made him lose consciousness by the police officer named Barış, who had threatened him with it earlier.

“They picked me up and made me lean my hands on the wall. The plastic bag was still on my head. Barış started to pull down my pants from behind. I grabbed one side of my pants with the other hand still against the wall. My feet were trembling while I was screaming, ‘Don’t do this.’ They shocked my hand and I fell to the floor. I was no longer able to stand.”

Eren went on to say that what scared him the most was the officers’ understanding of torture as some kind of religious obligation.

“When I regained consciousness and told them I wanted to pray, they said, ‘Do you think we don’t perform prayers just because we do this?’ I said my prayer and so did they. That was what scared me the most. They tortured me as if it were a religious duty, just like ISIL does.”

According to Eren, the torture that began around 9:30 in the morning ended at 9 p.m., and he was allowed to go back to his cell only after signing a statement given to him by the officers without the presence of his lawyer.

“Three or four days later, they took me upstairs again, but this time to the office of Talat Eryılmaz, where I saw my wife and my daughter. They said they were going to interrogate my wife while my daughter was crying, ‘Dad, get us out of here.’ Then the lawyer came and told me to ‘accept anything they say’ and he went to see my wife.”

“One of the officers who tortured me implied he could hurt my daughter sexually, telling me that he realized how grown up my daughter was,” he added.

Four days later, Eren was referred to Afyon Deputy Chief Public Prosecutor Osman Çabuk but decided not to tell him about the torture he endured because he thought Çabuk already knew about it.

After hiding in Turkey for two-and-a-half years following his release, Eren fled to Greece with his wife and daughter. They then moved on to Germany, where they now live as refugees.

Eren says he still has nightmares about the torture a few times a week and feels uneasy around police officers.

Emphasizing that he will do anything he can to have the Turkish police officers who used torture tried in both local and international courts, the former teacher urged all the victims of police torture in Turkey to speak out about it.

After the abortive putsch, ill-treatment and torture became widespread and systematic in Turkish detention centers as was evidenced by the UN special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment in a report based on his mission to Turkey between November 27 and December 2, 2016.

“[I]n the immediate aftermath of the failed coup, torture and other forms of ill-treatment were widespread, particularly at the time of arrest and during the subsequent detention in police or gendarmerie lock-ups as well as in improvised unofficial detention locations such as sports centers, stables and the corridors of courthouses,” the special rapporteur found.

A delegation from the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), a Council of Europe-affiliated body, was in Turkey to conduct inspections between August 28 and September 6, 2016 and recorded some of the victims’ statements in its report. The delegation’s visit came amid widespread allegations first raised by Amnesty International, which stated that it had collected credible evidence that detainees in Turkey were beaten, tortured and on some occasions raped in official and unofficial detention centers across the country.

However, the details of the CPT report were never made public because Turkey vetoed the publication of the report and has not lifted its objection since 2016. In fact CPT President Mykola Gnatovskyy stated in 2017 that even though he “[wanted] to discuss the findings,” he could not comment on the report due to Ankara’s decision.

Unlike the 2017 and 2019 reports, the Turkish government prohibited the publication of CPT’s 2016 Turkey report based on its inspections between August 28 and September 6, 2016 in Turkish detention centers after the failed coup.

Turkish businessman Osman Nakıboğlu, vice chairman of Naksan Holding before it was seized by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government following a coup attempt in 2016, now works at a food storage facility in the United States to make a living, Bold Medya reported on Thursday.

Days after the abortive putsch on July 15, 2016, the Turkish government seized Naksan Holding, which comprises more than 50 companies operating in various sectors including industry, energy, construction and transportation, appointing trustees to replace its board of directors due to their alleged links to the Gülen movement.

Ankara deems the faith-based movement inspired by Muslim preacher Fethullah Gülen as a terrorist organization and accuses Gülen as well as members of his movement of masterminding the coup attempt that killed over 250 civilians in Turkey.

According to an exclusive report by Sevinç Özarslan from Bold Medya, Nakıboğlu has been working at a food storage facility in California for more than two years while also working part-time jobs to make ends meet, contrary to allegations previously made by Turkey’s pro-government media outlets that he leads a life of luxury in the US.

The report said Nakıboğlu received unemployment benefits for a while during the COVID-19 pandemic.While his daughter has lived in the US since 2014 and now reportedly cleans horse stables for a living, Nakıboğlu’s son Bahaeddin currently provides advertising for small businesses operating through Amazon, after his company, Innoworld, involved in providing rental premises for entrepreneurs, closed down during the pandemic.

The father and son are among 25 charged with terror-related crimes by the Gaziantep Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office in the aftermath of the attempted coup.

Naksan Chairman Cahit Nakıboğlu, a 70-year-old businessman, spent two years behind bars after he was arrested on July 14, 2016, over his alleged ties to the Gülen movement. Although a Gaziantep court released him into house arrest due to medical problems on January 6, 2018, he was re-arrested the next day after journalist Cem Küçük, a staunch supporter of President Erdoğan, criticized the court’s decision.

His sons Taner and Emre Nakıboğlu, who received 15 and 11 years in prison, respectively, also over alleged links to the Gülen movement, are still behind bars.

Nakıboğlu family was one of the wealthiest families in Turkey’s Gaziantep province before their company was seized by Erdoğan’s AKP government as part of its post-coup crackdown on the Gülen movement.

Although Gülen and members of his faith-based movement strongly deny any role in the abortive putsch or any terrorist activity, the Turkish government launched a massive purge under the pretext of an anti-coup fight soon afterward and has removed more than 130,000 people from civil service jobs.

The government also seized assets such as schools, universities, media outlets, companies and apartment buildings and the wealth of individuals, corporations and organizations that were deemed to have ties to the movement.

In addition to Naksan Holding, Turkey’s Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF) has taken over major conglomerates including Dumankaya, Boydak Holding, the Koza Ipek Group and Kaynak Holding among 880 other private companies, according to Turkish media reports.

No figures are available verifying how much personal wealth and how many assets were seized by Erdoğan’s government during the massive post-coup purge still ongoing in Turkey.

An alleged assassination plot targeting Austrian-Kurdish politician Berivan Aslan and reportedly devised by Turkey’s intelligence service was aimed at finishing off the opposition against Turkey’s ruling party, even abroad, Aslan told Deutsche Welle (DW) Turkish on Thursday.  

“The case itself is very scary. Look, they [Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government] are now trying to [silence] opponents abroad, after doing that in Turkey. And [they are doing this] in a totally barbarous way by using mafia methods. It truly scares me,” the politician said.

Speaking to the Ahval news website in an exclusive interview on Wednesday, Aslan also claimed that “certain circles” together with the pro-government media were trying to render the assassination claims groundless.

“The assassination plan is real. I was personally informed about the plan by Austrian intelligence. I have been under police protection for nine days,” Aslan told Ahval.

Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) allegedly planned to have Aslan assassinated by one of its operatives.

Earlier in September Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer had signaled that they were questioning an agent who had confessed to spying for MIT, without providing further detail.

Last week, the identity of the operative was revealed as Feyyaz Ö., an Italian national with Turkish roots.

Surrendering himself “by going directly to Austrian intelligence,” Feyyaz Ö. testified self-confidently, Aslan added. The agent was told to “assassinate Aslan and convey the message.”

The operative was ordered to “cause chaos” among the Turkish and Kurdish communities in Austria, the Etkin News Agency (ETHA) said on Wednesday.

“I am not that important for them [the AKP]. However, I realized that I don’t represent a single body. I belong to a wide-ranging community — Alevis, Kurds, women, Muslims. … I can raise my voice for everyone. I think they [the AKP] looked at it from a different viewpoint this time. I think they thought the target should be an independent person so they could threaten Europe,” the politician said.

In June ultranationalist Turkish groups attacked Kurds in Vienna while they were protesting Turkey’s recent offensive against Kurds in Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his partner, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), accuse many Kurds of having ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency in the country since 1984.

In his confession Feyyaz Ö. had also admitted to giving false testimony as a secret witness in the trial of Metin Topuz, an employee of the US Consulate General in Istanbul who was sentenced to eight years, nine months in prison on terror charges in June, according to a report on zackzack.at.

Peter Pilz, the editor of the Zack Zack website, was also on the assassination list, in addition to Andreas Schieder, a member of the European Parliament from the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), and Efgani Dönmez, a Turkish-born former Austrian parliamentarian.

Similarly, last week another attack on a dissident was carried out last week in Sweden. Abdullah Bozkurt, a Turkish journalist forced to live in exile, was attacked by three men near his home in Stockholm. After the violent attack, the perpetrators ran away, while the journalist sustained injuries to the face, head, arms and legs.

Bozkurt and his colleagues in Sweden run the Nordic Monitor news website, providing exclusive and critical coverage on Turkey such as MIT’s clandestine activities.

“Bozkurt has regularly been receiving threats online, mostly from Turkey,” Nordic Monitor said last week.

In June Bozkurt had pointed to an open threat by two pro-AKP columnists.

“[Erdoğan’s] f***headed idiot operatives Cem Kucuk and Fuat Ugur publicly ask [for] my assassination on … national TV,” Bozkurt tweeted at the time.

I have been exposing dirty laundry of the #Turkey’s intelligence agency MIT including links to nasty jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS for years.

President @RTErdogan’s fuckheaded idiot operatives Cem Kucuk and Fuat Ugur publicly ask my assassination on a national TV. pic.twitter.com/plfK3slctv

— Abdullah Bozkurt (@abdbozkurt) June 4, 2020

Turkish authorities should investigate claims of the torture and ill-treatment of two villagers, Osman  Şiban (50) and Servet Turgut (55), who were allegedly thrown from a helicopter after their detention by gendarmes on September 11, Amnesty International said in a public statement on Friday.

The statement said Amnesty International found the allegations credible as medical reports indicated that both men sustained injuries consistent with falling from a height.

Şiban and Turgut are villagers from Çatak in the eastern province of Van. On September 11 a clash between the Turkish military and members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a secessionist group listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the United States, took place in the vicinity of Çatak. The two were working in their fields on the day of the incident.

According to eyewitness accounts reported by their lawyer, a group of soldiers came to the village to carry out ID checks. They detained Turgut on grounds that he was “acting suspiciously” while working in the fields. Between 15 to 20 gendarmes came to the village a second time in the late afternoon and asked for Şiban, who identified himself. He was also detained for allegedly aiding and abetting a terrorist group.

The gendarmes took the two men on foot, over a hill and to a helicopter in a clearing. A group of villagers followed the gendarmes and observed the pair being put into the helicopter, which then flew away. Their families did not hear from them for two days, after they left with the gendarmes.

Relatives received a call from the gendarmerie on September 13 asking for Servet Turgut’s ID number but stating that he was not with the gendarmerie. Later that day, members of the two men’s families learned that they were both in the Van Regional Teaching and Research Hospital’s intensive care unit where, as of September 28, Turgut is still in critical condition in a medically induced coma. His medical report refers to bruising of both eyes and ears and abrasion of the hands and chest cavity following a “fall.”

Amnesty International said it was “deeply concerned at the serious allegations of torture and other ill-treatment and the shocking allegation that they were thrown from the helicopter.” The human rights watchdog urged the Turkish government to subject the allegations to “a prompt, independent and impartial investigation” and to bring those suspected to have carried out the alleged torture or other ill-treatment to justice in fair trials.

Turgut’s brother Naif Turgut said he visited his brother twice in the hospital and that he was still in critical condition with a cerebral hemorrhage. “My brother was afraid and crying, he said they were blindfolded and thrown from a height.”

Naif Turgut claimed that he was called four days after the incident. An unidentified man told him that he saw two people being thrown out of a helicopter at dusk. “He said his conscience did not allow him to remain silent.”

Şiban’s medical report refers to a possible neck injury, bruising to the elbows and knees and severe bruising of both eyes as well as appearing confused and poorly oriented. His lawyer told Amnesty International that he was suffering from partial memory loss but had told his family that they had been beaten by the gendarmes. Şiban was released from the hospital on September 20.

Şiban was taken to a military hospital on September 22 by dozens of gendarmes, according to his lawyer. He was tested for COVID-19 and received a medical report stating that he was not fit to provide an official statement to the authorities.

The Van Governor’s Office issued a statement of September 21 referring to the case in the context of the military operation, stating that Turgut was in the vicinity of the operation “on the lookout and acting suspiciously. He fell and injured himself on some rocks while running away, having refused to comply with an order to stop, and was caught despite resisting arrest and detained according to procedure.”

According to the governor’s office, Şiban was believed to have been aiding and abetting members of the terrorist organization.

The statements contradict the version of events recounted by the villagers who witnessed the detentions and stated that both men were healthy at the time of boarding the helicopter, as well as the hospital medical reports.

Investigations of the villagers’ allegations are subject to a secrecy order, meaning the lawyers are unable to access the files relating to their clients. Amnesty International referred to this order and said that while there may be some aspects to the investigation that the authorities may legitimately argue require some reporting restrictions, a blanket application of a secrecy order may impede the right of the victims of alleged torture and other ill-treatment to access justice.

Amnesty International also called on the authorities to ensure that Şiban and Turgut have access to effective legal representation throughout the investigation and any subsequent prosecution.stockholmcf

There is an embargo on oil business with Syria, but it still takes place. The FinCEN Files, international research on money laundering, corroborates this. And Turkey’s largest oil company appears to play an uncanny role.

In the Kerch Strait off the Crimean coast, a dangerous undertaking cost 20 people their lives. On January 21, 2019, crews on two tankers were transferring liquified petroleum gas (LPG) from one ship to another at sea. Something went wrong and there was a terrible explosion. Both ships quickly burst into flames.

A search and rescue team tried to locate the burning tankers to rescue the crews. But they lost valuable time. Both ships had loaded illicit cargo and switched off their tracking systems to avoid detection by authorities.

In the end, only 14 sailors could be saved. Most of the victims were Indian and Turkish citizens.

Sailors hired ‘under false pretenses’

Crew member Erdogan Cetinok (45), who was killed that day, had boarded one of the tankers, the Candy, less than a month earlier in Istanbul. It was his first job with Milenyum Energy SA, which owned both the ships involved in the Kerch Strait incident. Before his death, he told his sister that the ship was sailing for Libya.

In reality, it was more likely headed to Syria. It was later discovered that both the Tanzanian-flagged tankers — the Candy and the Maestro — as well as the company that owned them were on a US blacklist for violating sanctions on Syria.

Erdogan Cetinok’s sister Hulya said she believes Milenyum’s owners are to blame for the accident and the deaths of the 20 people: “They were hired under false pretenses. What’s left behind are the orphans.”

FinCEN Files revelations

Were those behind the disaster in the Kerch Strait part of a broader network of international players directly violating international sanctions on Syria by transporting oil and gas products in an out of the country? Extensive research by a team of more than 400 journalists from 88 countries points in this direction.

Insights into these dubious networks and their forbidden practices come from documents prepared by compliance officers within banks and submitted to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a regulatory unit within the US Treasury Department tasked with fighting money laundering. Financial institutions are required to file so-called Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) when they have reason to believe that transactions may violate regulations. SARs are not necessarily evidence of wrongdoing. They reflect the views of watchdogs within banks.

In 2019, a cache of such SARs was leaked to BuzzFeed News, which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Over the course of 16 months, hundreds of investigative journalists evaluated the secret banking reports and additional documents. The result is the FinCEN Files— an extensive investigation into the illicit money flows around the globe.

Circumventing sanctions on Syria

US and EU sanctions targeting the import,purchase and transport of oil and petroleum products to and from Syria have been in place since 2011. In August 2015, in an attempt to weaken Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s support network, the US Department of the Treasury (USDT) announced new sanctions directly targeting individuals and companies providing energy products used by the Syrian regime.

Among these newly blacklisted entities was Milenyum Energy. The company is registered in Panama and operates in Turkey. The USDT maintains that Milenyum made regular shipments of oil products to the Syrian port of Baniyas. As a consequence, its oil shipping vessels were blocked.

The company’s director, Ufuk Kenar; two of its managers, Serkan and Erkan Duzgoren; and another employee, Mustafa Aydin; were all individually sanctioned.

Blue Energy, a company closely linked to Milenyum and registered in the Caribbean island state of Saint Kitts and Nevis, was also affected. According to the USDT, Milenyum used its partner Blue Energy to receive payments for those energy-related shipments.

But despite US and EU sanctions, tankers owned by Milenyum Energy continued their activities, with their vessels shipping oil products in and out of Syria just as before. Their forbidden transactions weren’t discovered until the fatal explosion in the Kerch Strait, which killed Turkish sailor Cetinok and 19 others.

It turned out that one of Milenyum’s sanctioned tankers, the Green Light, was sailing under a new name: Maestro — the vessel that went up in flames alongside the Candy.

Information gleaned from the FinCEN Files suggests that bigger players, such as Petkim — Turkey’s premier petrochemical company — may also have been involved in Milenyum and Blue Energy’s illegal operations with regard to Syria.

Founded in 1965, Petkim Petrochemical Holding began as a state-owned petrochemical manufacturing company. Petkim was privatized in 2008 when the Turkish state sold its 51% stake in the company to the SOCAR & Turcas Consortium. In 2012, SOCAR, or the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic, bought Turcas’ shares and is now the majority owner. The remaining shares are traded on the Istanbul Stock Exchange.

The trail of FinCEN documents pointing towards Petkim begins in Malta. The files show that in 2016 US Bank BNY Mellon filed a Suspicious Activity Report relating to a firm called Petrokim, a company based on the Mediterranean island. Malta is considered a tax haven. According to the US bank, Petrokim is associated with the Turkish Petkim.

BNY Mellon provided foreign correspondent banking services to Petrokim, helping it to conduct business abroad. While doing so, the US bank noted that the company completed 223 cash transactions amounting to more than $224 million between March 2010 and July 2016. Its report indicated that suspicious money transactions suggested Petrokim may have violated sanctions on Syria.

Furthermore, it described the company as “a shell-like entity maintaining an address in the high-risk jurisdiction of Malta,” adding that Petrokim was “using an address that is identical to numerous entities that were designated SDNs under Iran sanctions.” SDNs is the abbreviation for “Specially Designated Nationals” who are blacklisted. SDNs can be individuals or companies. Their assets are blocked, and US persons are generally prohibited from dealing with them.

According to BNY Mellon, both “shell-like” Petrokim and Turkish oil giant Petkim completed over $90 million in “suspicious transactions” between March 2010 and January 2016. Milenyum business partner Blue Energy, which the USDT claims to be involved in the illicit trade of petroleum products to Syria, was also among the companies with which Petrokim exchanged payments — over $13 million worth of transactions between July and December of 2014.

BNY Mellon’s listing of Petrokim as an associate of Turkey’s Petkim was confirmed in the ICIJ’s 2017 Paradise Papers investigation. Research conducted for the Paradise Papers showed that Samir Karimov, who served as vice president of SOCAR Turkey at the time, was also the director and legal representative of Petrokim. At this time, SOCAR was the majority owner of Petkim.

The relationship between Petkim and Petrokim was also confirmed in Petkim’s financial records. There Petrokim was listed under liabilities, as Petkim was behind in payments to its Malta-based associate.

Companies respond to the allegations

Between 2009 and 2017, Petrokim was administered by the law firm Fenlex, which is also based in Malta. In response to questions from the ICIJ, Fenlex denied that Petrokim was “involved in trades in breach of the US (or European) sanctions in force at the time in connection with Syria.”

Fenlex further stated that Petrokim “did not transact with Syrian entities, nor did it tranship any goods to or from Syria.”

The oil firm Petkim and its majority shareholder, SOCAR, refused to comment on the allegations. BNY Mellon continues to offer correspondence banking services to Petrokim, despite having filed the Suspicious Activity Report.

An investigation into the 2019 Kerch Strait ship blaze is ongoing, with Milenyum Energy director Ufuk Kenar and managers Serkan and Erkan Duzgoren, as well as the captains of the Candy and the Maestro, all on trial. The next hearing will take place in Istanbul on November 20.

Hulya Cetinok, who lost her brother in the accident off the Crimean coast, wants to be hopeful for the upcoming trial. But she also has her doubts after the captains of the ships were released in a previous trial: “As the relatives of the victims of this disaster, our only expectation is that justice be served and those responsible get the sentence they deserve.”dw.com