Category: World

Turkish authorities have failed to release a political prisoner with advanced Parkinson’s disease who has completed his mandatory time in prison, the Bold Medya news website reported.

Bilal Şen, who was sentenced to six years, eight months in prison on trumped-up, terrorism-related charges, completed the legally required four-year prison term as of last week, making him eligible for release on probation according to Turkish legislation on the execution of sentences. However, the authorities are refusing to release him on the grounds that his sentence has not yet been finalized as it has yet not been upheld by the Supreme Court of Appeals.

Şen, 47, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2013, a disease that generally occurs in elderly people. He was arrested on July 29, 2016 following a July 15, 2016 coup attempt in Turkey as part of a massive post-coup purge.

His disease progressed rapidly in a prison in the Central Anatolian city of Kırşehir where he has been incarcerated. “When he was first put into prison, he was able to lead a normal life and take care of his personal needs on his own. Yet, his illness progressed rapidly because he could not get proper medical treatment in prison. It also has a lot to do with his psychological health deteriorating in prison,” his wife says.

Şen now has difficulty walking. “He walks like a toddler. He cannot set his legs in motion, and when he somehow starts walking, he cannot stop himself on his own, making his body go forward and feet lag. He can only take a step by holding on to the walls. His disease also causes low blood pressure, making him prone to falling. He has in fact fallen three times, causing damage to his brain as evidenced by a medical report. The right side of his body has tremors, making him unable to use his right hand. His left side has begun to show similar symptoms. His tongue has tremors as well, disrupting his speech. His mouth contracts inward. His illness has advanced considerably. He now needs to be taken care of like a baby,” his wife states.

He is not fit to stay in prison, according to his wife. “Patients with Parkinson’s are difficult to look after even at home. He needs intense and constant care. He cannot cut his nails, shave or even brush his teeth. His friends were helping him in prison in Kırşehir,” his wife recounts.

He was sent five times to the Istanbul Council of Forensic Medicine for a medical examination to ascertain his fitness to stay in prison. “They issued a report declaring him fit to stay in prison each and every time he was sent there, instead of recommending his release on health grounds. At the first referral, a doctor asked, ‘Does it really matter to you if you’re in prison or out given your illness?’ He was really hurt by that. On one occasion a doctor who had previously examined him said in consternation, ‘Haven’t we released you by now?’”

At his fifth referral one year ago in July 2019, he was transferred to the Metris Rehabilitation Prison in İstanbul where sick inmates are incarcerated. “He is alone in Metris. There is no one to help him there, making his situation psychologically and physically grimmer,” his wife laments.

Arrested on July 29, 2016, Şen was sentenced in September 2018 to six years, eight months in prison over his connections to the faith-based Gülen movement, a dissident group that has long been targeted by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The court based Şen’s conviction on his alleged connections to Gülenist institutions – membership in a trade union, sending his child to a school and having an account in a bank — all of which, according to the authorities, are pieces of evidence showing his membership in a terrorist organization, a circumstance disputed by international courts and organizations.

A UN body recently found deprivation of liberty on similar grounds to be unlawful and arbitrary, declaring that none of the above-mentioned acts and activities in themselves could be construed as criminal acts, but rather as the peaceful exercise of rights granted under human rights treaties.

President Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and declared an all-out war on it making adherence to the movement a crime by association, a process that gained momentum after the abortive coup on July 15, 2016, which President Erdoğan accuses Fethullah Gülen, a US-based cleric and the spiritual leader of the movement, of masterminding despite his categorical denial of any involvement.

As part of the post-coup Gülenist purge, the Turkish government dismissed more than 150,000 civil servants from state jobs and investigated almost 600,000 people, detaining or arresting half of them on terrorism charges.

Şen has spent four years in prison. He became eligible for release on probation last week as set forth by a Turkish law on the execution of sentences. Yet, the authorities refuse to free him on probation because his sentence is pending before the Supreme Court of Appeals.

The Stockholm Center for Freedom has previously documented that Turkish authorities do not release many political prisoners who have served their time on similar grounds.stockholmcf

Turkish police on Wednesday detained six members of folk music band Grup Yorum as they were rehearsing for a concert in İstanbul’s Beykoz district, the Duvar English news website reported.

The People’s Law Office said in a statement that the police also simultaneously raided the İdil Culture Center located in the city’s Okmeydanı neighborhood, which is run by a few of the group members and where the band often meets.

The Interior Ministry had recently denied the group’s application to give a concert at the city’s Yenikapı Arena.

Founded in 1985 in reaction to the 1980 military coup and subsequent military policies, Grup Yorum is known for its leftist stance and songs about political issues in Turkey.

The group has always been vocal about human rights violations and freedoms in the country, prompting authorities to accuse them of being “members of terrorist groups.”

Band member Helin Bölek died on April 3 after 288 days on a hunger strike, while İbrahim Gökçek died on May 7, only two days after ending a 323-day hunger strike.

The musicians demanded that the bans on their band be lifted and that they be allowed to perform again, that their cultural center not be raided anymore and that their band members’ names be cleared of terror charges.stockholmcf

The campaign of Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for the US presidential election in November, has appointed Elvir Klempic, the former executive director of the Turkish Heritage Organization (THO), as the national affinity and ethnic engagement director, according to the Asbarez news website.

THO is known for its close ties to the inner circle of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Leaked emails published by Wikileaks in late 2017 show that the organization was created in 2014, with the involvement of Erdoğan’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, who at the time was Turkey’s energy minister (currently finance minister) as a way to “camouflage” Turkey’s lobbying activities in the US.

In the emails THO’s former president Halil Danışmaz details a “roadmap” to “circumvent tax and other impediments in the laws” by hiring journalists who could get access to “American political and bureaucratic circles,” including members of Congress. These journalists would then get paid to write and publish articles in American newspapers and on news sites essentially advocating for Erdoğan’s agenda and developing opinion in legislative circles.

Danışmaz, who before becoming THO president was a board member of the Turkish American National Steering Committee, was questioned by the FBI along with other Turks over their operations in the US and ties to the Turkish government.

He unceremoniously left THO and was replaced by Ali Çınar, who during an event in 2015 said “Armenian Genocide allegations are both racist and dishonest.”

In a column in the Washington Examiner on July 21, Turkey analyst Michael Rubin commented on the Erdoğan government’s efforts to “infiltrate” the Biden campaign.

“At the Turkish Heritage Organization, [Klempic] promoted the Erdogan regime’s talking points uncritically. A Bosnian website’s profile shows how his activities working on behalf of Democratic candidates and the Turkish Heritage Organization overlapped,” Rubin said.

Egypt denied the extradition of dedicated educator Ali Bayram on dubious terrorism charges brought by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish Justice Ministry document revealed.

Bayram, an educator who was deeply committed to improving the quality of education and founded several schools in Turkey, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, passed away last month in Cairo, where he was living in exile. Bayram, a 70-year-old education volunteer who devoted his life to the education of young people, suffered a brain hemorrhage.

After a coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016, with news mounting of the jailing and torture of people affiliated with the Gülen movement, he had to flee the country and sought refuge in Egypt in order to escape a massive crackdown.

According to the justice ministry document, obtained by Nordic Monitor, an extradition request for Bayram was filed on February 2, 2017 by the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the justice ministry forwarded the request to the foreign ministry on July 3, 2017 to start an official extradition process.

A justice ministry communication dated June 17, 2020, and signed by Abdullah Ömeroğlu, a judge and director general of international law and foreign relations at the justice ministry, revealed that the Turkish embassy in Cairo had to reiterate the extradition request since Egyptian authorities had declined the request via diplomatic channels. Ömeroğlu also informed the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office of Bayram’s demise in Cairo on June 2 in order to end the extradition process.

Turkish Justice Ministry document confirming that Turkey repeatedly requested the extradition of educator Ali Bayram from Egypt:

 

 

 

 

 

According to the justice ministry document, the request for the extradition of Bayram was based on an arrest warrant issued in absentia, under file No. 2016/238, by the Ankara 4th High Criminal Court for undermining the constitutional order, committing the crime of setting up or running an armed terrorist group. The document exposed the fact that Bayram was seen as “the leader of a terrorist organization” due to his contributions to schools and institutions affiliated with Fethullah Gülen, the US-based Turkish Muslim scholar who describes terrorism as “the foremost threat to human life” and condemns all kinds of extremist and radical acts.

The Gülen movement is a group known for its investment in science, education and the promotion of interfaith and intercultural dialogue around the world. The movement is led by Gülen, an outspoken critic of the Turkish president for pervasive corruption in the government and Erdoğan’s support for jihadist groups in Syria. Erdoğan accuses the movement of being behind corruption investigations in 2013 and the coup attempt in July 2016, allegations the movement denies.

 

 

In addition to Egypt, many other countries rejected Turkey’s politically motivated extradition requests for people who were forced to leave their homeland because of an ongoing witch hunt against critics in the aftermath of the coup attempt. In that regard the UN Committee Against Torture decided in June 2019 that the extradition of people who were thought to be members of the movement would constitute a violation of Article 3 of the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

More than a half million people were investigated in Turkey on similar charges following the abortive putsch. Based on profiling lists, people were arrested, investigated and even prosecuted. Their assets were seized, and family members and relatives were also the subject of criminal charges. Working as a teacher in Gülen-inspired schools or contributing to non-profit institutions affiliated with the movement abroad are considered to be acts of terrorism by the Erdoğan government.

With the purge and/or imprisonment of 4,560 judges and prosecutors in the 2016-2017 period, the rule of law was effectively suspended and the Turkish judiciary was transformed into a tool of the government, which often abuses the criminal justice system to punish its critics and opponents on terrorism charges.

Melek Çetinkaya, the mother of a former military cadet who has been sentenced to life in prison for his alleged role in a 2016 failed coup in Turkey, has announced that she will start a “justice march” from Ankara to İstanbul’s notorious Silivri Prison, where her son is incarcerated.

Çetinkaya has been struggling to convince officials that former military cadets like her son had nothing to do with the coup attempt and has staged a number of protests in front of ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) headquarters in Ankara.

She told Deutsche Welle (DW) Turkish service on Monday that the former cadets were brought to İstanbul on the night of the coup, July 15, 2016, for an alleged terrorist attack, and that they had no idea about a military putsch.

A total of 259 ex-cadets who were on İstanbul’s Bosporus Bridge that night were sentenced to life in prison. The same night two others were brutally killed by an angry mob near the bridge.

“I feel in my bones that there’s no justice here, but I’ll still pursue to the end,” Çetinkaya told DW Turkish.

Her son Furkan Çetinkaya is living in a severely overcrowded ward and is given an inadequate amount of food every day, Melek Çetinkaya added.

“I know he’s innocent, but I can’t get him out of prison. If I thought, even for a second, that he was not innocent, I’d accept the court’s verdict,” she said.

In 2017 Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition party, walked from Ankara to İstanbul, where a deputy from his party was imprisoned on terrorism charges.

The deputy, Enis Berberoğlu, was eventually released.

A Turkish court on Thursday handed down lengthy sentences to Cafer Tekin İpek and Melek İpek, former board members of İpek Holding, which was seized by the government in 2015, on conviction of membership of the faith-based Gülen movement and tax evasion, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

Cafer Tekin İpek, a brother of Akın İpek, the founder of İpek Holding who has been living in the UK since 2015, received nearly 80 years’ imprisonment, while Melek İpek, mother of Akın and Cafer, was given 12 years, 8 months in prison.

The 13 remaining defendants were also given jail sentences ranging between two and almost 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 holding has been managed by a group of government-appointed trustees since 2015.

Turkey accuses the Gülen movement of orchestrating a 2016 coup attempt, although it strongly denies any involvement. Ankara also believes the movement had attempted to overthrow the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government several times before the failed coup, most notably by conducting a corruption investigation into the close circle of then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2013.

When the government decided to seize İpek Holding, Akın İpek was in the UK and decided not to return home.

The Turkish government filed a formal extradition request for the senior İpek that was rejected by a UK court.

A total of 161 media workers will greet the new year in jail in Turkey, according to a report drafted by Jailed Journos, an online platform.

The report includes a list that provides the names, companies and positions of each journalist as well as the date of their arrest and the prison in which they are currently being held.

According to the report 89 of the media workers who will welcome 2020 in jail are reporters, editors or columnists, and nine are women.

The list of jailed journalists includes two local newspaper bosses, Kütahya-based Akis and Karşı online newspapers’ owner Alaaddin Akkaşoğlu, and the Ankara-based Belde newspaper’s owner Alaaddin Kaya, who was the former licensee of the Zaman daily, which was closed down by the Turkish government in the aftermath of a failed coup in 2016.

There are also other jailed media workers on the list who work in the background such as technical staff. The number of journalists who used to work for the state-run Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) and Anadolu news agency and are currently in jail is not known.

Dozens of critical journalists were arrested while hundreds of media outlets were closed down in the aftermath of the failed coup, following which the Turkish government launched a massive crackdown on non-loyalist citizens under the pretext of an anti-coup fight.turkishminute

A Turkish court on Thursday arrested former Lt. Gen. Metin İyidil two days after his release in a trial in which he faced charges related to a coup attempt on July 15, 2016, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

“Everything I did on the night of the coup was aimed at thwarting it,” İyidil said in court during his first questioning after his detention.

The former head of the Land Forces Training and Doctrine Command (EDOK) had been handed down an aggravated life sentence by a court of first instance that found him guilty of “attempting to overthrow the constitutional order through violence,” as part of an investigation into the 2016 coup attempt.

He was later freed pending a retrial after an appeals court overturned the verdict.

Meanwhile, the members of the appeals court who vacated the lower court’s decision were suddenly reassigned without explanation to other provinces by the Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSK), according to a report by the Hürriyet daily.

The HSK has also launched an internal investigation into the former members of the chamber.

In addition, three suspects have been detained for allegedly plotting to help İyidil flee the country.

The police were reportedly tipped off as they detected İyidil leaving his residence and relocating to another house in Ankara in a move they found unusual.

The suspects, who were identified only by their initials, were lawyer A.K., İyidil’s nephew B.Ö. and his nephew’s spouse E.Ö.

Hürriyet reported that B.Ö. is also the son of Nihat Özdemir, the chairman of the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) and a prominent businessman known for having close ties to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.turkishminute

Regime says it is cracking down on anything linked to Fethullah Gülen, the Muslim cleric it blames for 2016’s attempted coup.More than 300,000 books have been removed from Turkish schools and libraries and destroyed since the attempted coup of 2016, according to Turkey’s ministry of education.

Turkey’s education minister Ziya Selçuk announced last week that 301,878 books had been destroyed as the government cracks down on anything linked to Fethullah Gülen, the US-based Muslim cleric who is accused by Turkey of instigating 2016’s failed military coup. Gülen has denied involvement.

The figure was first reported by the popular newspaper Hürriyet, with images of books being seized and burned published by online news outlet Kronos27.

According to the website Turkey Purge, which describes itself as “a small group of young journalists who are trying to be the voice for Turkish people who suffer under an oppressive regime”, in 2016 a maths book was banned for featuring Gülen’s initials in a question reading “from point F to point G”. In December 2016, Turkish newspaper BirGün reported that 1.8m textbooks had been destroyed and reprinted for containing the “objectionable” word Pennsylvania, which is where Gülen lives in a guarded compound. Streets named Gülen in Ankara have also been renamed, according to reports.

A 2018 report from English PEN found that, following the state of emergency decreed after the attempted coup, 200 media outlets and publishing organisations had been shut down, 80 writers subjected to investigations and prosecutions and 5,822 academics dismissed from 118 public universities. The report pointed to a “crisis of freedom of expression” in Turkey.

“The government has dramatically increased its influence on the media and publishing landscape, thereby silencing critical voices,” said PEN. “We call on the Turkish authorities to permit the reopening and independent operation of publishing houses, and to urgently end their far-reaching crackdown on freedom of expression, which continues unabated.”

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We are two full weeks into Melbourne’s city-wide stay-at-home rules, but Victoria’s curve is still on the rise.

While yesterday saw the single biggest number of new infections Australia has recorded in this pandemic, we can have no confidence that the record won’t be broken again before too long.

Regional Victoria is not spared. Case numbers there remain small, but clusters have the potential to cause headaches.

So far, most of these cases remain in a ring around Melbourne, within commuting distance from the capital.

Geelong and Colac Otway are the hardest hit, and there is a sizable cluster of 17 cases linked to Australian Lamb Company in Colac.

That needs to be brought under control before we see significant community transmission in regional areas.

Stage three restrictions have clearly had some impact on the spread throughout the state: we would have expected to be seeing far more cases per day than this without tighter controls.

But there hasn’t been enough movement to push the trajectory downward, so what’s going wrong?

The low compliance with self-isolation rules clearly isn’t helping.

Daniel Andrews’ revelation yesterday that more than half of infected people didn’t stay home between being swabbed and getting their test result was alarming.

It is also a revelation that the New South Wales Government would be wise to take notice of.

New South Wales health authorities are relying on people potentially exposed to coronavirus to self-isolate for 14 days.

That could be very important in efforts to contain clusters, including any further transmission from Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral, where an infected person attended three masses and a funeral last week.

If Victorians aren’t self-isolating when asked to, why would we have any confidence that Sydneysiders are?

It is becoming increasingly apparent that Victoria’s contact tracers are getting overwhelmed.

There are 2,245 cases in the state that are still having their source investigated — and some of those infections were found more than a week ago.

Because of that gigantic backlog, it is harder to know if Victoria has a widespread problem with community transmission rates, or if the spread is confined to certain environments.

Victoria could be behind the eight-ball in identifying potential new clusters.

Once that happens you cannot rely as much on testing and tracing cases and need to resort to blunter tools like tougher restrictions.

While Melburnians seem to be moving less now than a few weeks ago, activity hasn’t slowed to the lows we saw in April.

Data from Apple Maps users suggests driving activity is down to 57 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, significantly more than the first time Melbourne was under stage three restrictions.

With more people still out and about, and far more chains of community transmission that need to be extinguished this time around, should we be surprised that the curve is taking longer to turn around?

Perhaps a better adherence to self-isolation rules, coupled with the compulsory mask-wearing rules which take effect today, will be more effective at driving numbers down.

But every day that the curve continues to trend upwards makes it harder to bring numbers under control within six weeks, and therefore more likely the city-wide lockdown will need to be extended.

And every day this virus continues to spread will also lead to more people getting sick and dying.abc news