Category: World

Melek Çetinkaya, the mother of one of the military cadets who were jailed in the aftermath of a failed coup in Turkey in July 2016 and sentenced to life in prison, was prevented from launching a march for justice from Ankara to İstanbul on Sunday and was detained with 66 others who were to join her during the march, according to Turkish media reports.

Çetinkaya was going launch the “Justice March” in Ankara’s Güven Park to demand that justice be served in the cases of jailed military cadets who according to their testimonies were unaware of a coup attempt unfolding on the night of July 15, 2016 and were not involved in any acts of violence.

The coup attempt, which was suppressed overnight, claimed the lives of 249 people and injured a thousand others.

Çetinkaya and 66 other protestors, including the family members of other jailed cadets, were planning to walk from Güven Park to Silivri Prison in İstanbul, where the cadets are jailed.

Police teams took heightened security measures in Güven Park before the group gathered and began to detain them as they entered the park.

Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a human rights activist and an opposition deputy, who was also in the area, said the protestors were detained even when they were just standing around.

Çetinkaya said she and the other protestors were beaten by the police while being detained. She said she was determined to make the march no matter what obstacles she faced.

“I am a mother who has pain in her heart. You gave life sentences to 19-year-old military cadets. We remained silent for three-and-a-half years. You won’t be able to silence us from now on. Justice will come to this country,” she said as she was being taken away in handcuffs.

Çetinkaya and the other protestors were released from detention in the evening hours.

She 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 last week that the former cadets were brought to İstanbul on the night of the coup 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. That same night two other cadets were brutally murdered by an angry mob near the bridge.

The power of the Turkish passport declined three spots and fell to 55th in a list of 191 countries, according to a global passport index.

The Henley Passport Index ranks countries according to the number of destinations passport holders can visit without a pre-arranged visa, which decreased for Turkey this year. As of 2020, Turkish citizens can travel to 111 countries without a visa.

In 2019 Turkey had a ranking of 52nd in the same index.In 2006 Turkey was ranked 46th in the Henley Passport Index when it was first introduced.For the third consecutive year, Japan has secured the top spot on the index with a visa-free/visa-on-arrival score of 191.

Singapore held on to its second-place position with a score of 190, while South Korea dropped to third place along with Germany, giving their passport holders visa-free/visa-on-arrival access to 189 destinations worldwide.

At the other end of the travel freedom spectrum, Afghanistan remained at the bottom of the index, with its nationals only able to visit a mere 26 destinations visa-free.

The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee is set to vote next week on legislation to slap Turkey with sanctions, the committee’s Chairman Jim Risch said on Tuesday.

“We’re going to mark up the Turkey bill next week,” the Hill quoted Risch as telling reporters.

Risch said Turkey has turned down an opportunity to avoid measures for its purchase of Russian-built S-400 missile defence systems and will face sanctions U.S. sanctions soon.

The Idaho senator told Defense News in an interview that he had offered Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a way to avoid financial measures over the S-400 purchase during his Washington visit in Nov., but the offer had been ignored.

“On the airplane on the way home, Erdogan told the reporters that he hasn’t given up on the S-400s,” Risch said. “As soon as I saw that, I said: ‘Well, I’m gonna take him at his word.’ And if I’m going to take him at his word, no sense not to run the sanctions bill. So it’s my intent to move ahead with it sooner rather than later.”

NATO officials believe the Russian defence systems could lead to security breaches in the allied defence network, prompting the United States to suspend Turkey from its F-35 fighter jet manufacturing programme after it received the first shipments of S-400s in July.

Turkey also faces sanctions under the Countering American’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, 2017 legislation designed to discourage third parties from buying weapons from Russia, but the White House is yet to implement them.

Risch said U.S. President Donald Trump must go through with the sanctions because “the world’s got to know we’re serious about CAATSA sanctions. You can’t do this [buying S-400 missiles from the Russians].”

“And this is particularly true with a NATO member. [It’s] not compatible with membership in NATO, nor is it compatible for owning F-35s,” he said. “It’s important that the world knows and in particular NATO partners know that we’re serious about this.”

The United States has halted the delivery of the 100 F-35 jets Turkey had ordered, and Risch, whose Foreign Relations Committee is charged with signing off on arms sales to foreign countries, said he had told Erdoğan this would be extended to a ban on all military hardware.

Lawyers from the Ankara Bar Association say they were intimidated by management and threatened by guards at Sincan Prison, where they went to meet with four inmates who were found in police custody after they were missing for six months, the Artı Gerçek news website reported.

The prison administration only allowed Salim Zeybek, among the four, to meet with the lawyers, the report said.

The meeting was conducted in the presence of a guard and was recorded.

Zeybek, a former public servant dismissed by a government decree after a 2016 coup attempt, told the lawyers that he was not abducted by any state official.

Dozens of people were reportedly abducted by intelligence officers after the coup attempt, but only two people so far have revealed that they were kept unlawfully in a detention center and subjected to torture.

Zeybek claimed that he was with the three others and hiding from the police for six months before turning themselves in and that they did not feel the need to contact their families.

The families of the then-missing men had run an effective social media campaign to find their loved ones.

The four suspects are charged with membership in the Gülen movement, which is accused of masterminding the 2016 coup attempt despite its strong denial of any involvement.

After the meeting with Zeybek, the guard seized the notes taken by the lawyers, and used threatening language, according to the report.

Yusuf Bilge Tunç, another public servant dismissed over Gülen ties, has been missing since August.

The Turkish government has knowledge on the location of the leading fugitive suspect in the July 2016 coup attempt,  Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said on Sunday.

Adil Öksüz is accused by Ankara of being a senior member of the Gülen movement who masterminded the July 15, 2016 coup attempt to topple the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Ankara designates the Gülen movement a terrorist organisation and has pursued a worldwide crackdown on the group.

“We know where Adil Öksüz is. But let that information remain with us. Just as we follow the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and the DHKP-C (The Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front), we do the same with FETÖ (Fethullahist Terror Organisation),’’ Sözcü newspaper reported Soylu as saying.

Video footage shows Öksüz at the Akıncı military base, the airbase from which the attempt was launched, on the night of the coup. The former theology professor at Sakarya University was captured at the base then released two days later and has been a fugitive since.

“Let our citizens [hearts] be at rest. We will leave no obstruction at home were FETÖ is concerned. The United States continues to host their ringleader… ’’ Soylu said, in an apparent reference to Fethullah Gülen, the U.S.-based cleric and leader of the Gülen movement.

Over 77,000 people have been imprisoned over links to the Gülen movement and some 150,000 public employees have been suspended or sacked as part of the Turkish government’ crackdown on the group.

Turkey has previously claimed that Öksuz lives in Germany and demanded that he be extradited.ahvalnews

Alparslan Kuytul, the head of a religious community critical of the Turkish government, was released pending trial on Thursday after 22 months of incarceration, the Turkish media reported.

Furkan Foundation Chairman Kuytul, a vocal critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is facing a 20-year prison sentence on terrorism charges.He was released by a court pending trial in January and re-arrested after an objection from a prosecutor. “

We beg Allah for the freedom of victims who were unlawfully prisoned,” the followers of Kuytul wrote in a statement issued on Thursday.

A number of migrants claimed to have been tortured and abused by Greek soldiers before being physically pushed back over the border to Turkey, Britain’s Metro news website reported on Tuesday.

The report featured pictures of a group of migrants displaying the injuries they claimed were caused by Greek soldiers.

One said he was blindfolded and burnt with a cigarette, while another said his foot ended up broken in several places. A third migrant claimed the Greek authorities confiscated his money and clothes while others said they had been hit on the head with sticks.

The allegations form part of a growing number of complaints made against Greek security forces at the border with Turkey.

In the past year hundreds of people have claimed to have been tortured and abused before being forcibly pushed back to Turkey.

Turkey alleges that this year alone Greece rejected some 25,404 migrants. While the figure has not been independently verified, there are allegations of severe abuse, which includes withholding food and water.

Greece has been struggling with the number of migrants on both the mainland and the islands. Two days ago its camps on five Aegean islands with an official capacity of 6,178 people was holding 35,590 men, women and children in unsanitary and dangerous conditions.

The Greek government has pledged tougher restrictions on migration.

The future of the Germany’s coalition government has been thrown into doubt by the newly elected leaders of the SPD. They are seeking fresh terms of the alliance that was formed in 2017.

The newly elected co-leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), Norbert Walter-Borjans, cast further doubt on Sunday over the sustainability of the coalition government in Germany, increasing the prospect of a general election in 2020.

Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken, from the SPD, called for significant policy concessions from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), and said they are prepared to abandon the partnership if they are not adhered to.

Read more: The secret money in German politics

Speaking on public broadcaster ARD, Walter-Borjans said raising investments and scrapping temporary job contracts were issues that needed to be addressed if Merkel wanted to prolong the coalition.”If the coalition partner then takes an obstructive approach for these new tasks then you have to make a decision that it cannot continue,” he said.

New terms dismissed by CDU

But the notion of renegotiating the current terms drew short shrift from Armin Laschet, the CDU premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state. He told public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk: “Of course nothing will be renegotiated now. That’s quite clear.”

Asked whether there was movement on the concessions that the new SPD leadership wants, Laschet said: “There is no such thing.”

The likelihood of a compromise on the current terms was also dismissed by Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU). Angela Merkel’s successor in waiting said: “For the CDU it is quite clear: We stand by this coalition. We stand by this coalition on the basis that has been negotiated.”

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has ruled against the extradition of a teacher linked to the Gülen movement from Morocco to Turkey on the grounds that he faces the risk of being subjected to torture if he is extradited, the tr724 news website reported.

The decision of the UN rights body concerns the case of Mustafa Önder, a 34-year-old Turkish teacher who was detained in 2017 by the Moroccan authorities at the request of Turkey while he was working for a private school in Morocco.

Turkey accuses Önder of membership in a terrorist organization due to his links to the Gülen or Hizmet movement, which is accused by the Turkish government of masterminding a failed coup in July 2016. The movement strongly denies any involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.

In its decision the UN commission said: ”In view of the complainant’s profile as a perceived or actual member of the Hizmet movement, the Committee concludes that, in this case, assurances are insufficient to dispel the argument that a foreseeable, real and personal risk of the complainant being subjected to torture if extradited to Turkey, in violation of article 3 of the Convention, can be said to exist. The Committee, acting under article 22 (7) of the Convention, therefore concludes that the complainant’s extradition to Turkey would constitute a violation of article 3 of the Convention.”

The commission refers to the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which was ratified by Morocco in June 1993.

In April 2017 Önder and his family applied for asylum with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Rabat. They are still awaiting a response.

In December 2017 Morocco informed the committee that the complainant’s extradition to Turkey had been suspended until the committee issued its decision on the complaint.

Following the coup attempt, the Turkish government launched a massive crackdown on followers of the movement under the pretext of an anti-coup fight as a result of which more than 150,000 people were removed from state jobs while in excess of 30,000 others were jailed and some 600,000 people have been investigated on allegations of terrorism.

The Turkish government also ensured the closing down of many Gülen-linked schools abroad, and the Turkish intelligence service brought Gülen-linked individuals who were abroad to Turkey by force.

The UN rights commission’s decision concerning the case of Önder is expected to set a precedent in similar cases when the Turkish government demands the extradition of Gülen followers from other countries.

A freed Iraqi Yazidi woman, who was held as a sex slave by the Islamic State (IS) group, came face-to-face with her tormentor on Iraqi television, demanding an explanation for her suffering before collapsing to the ground.

Ashwaq Hajji Hamid had been kidnapped and sold to IS when she was separated from her family and taken to Syria at the age of 14.

IS captured the Yazidi ancestral heartland of Sinjar in northern Iraq in August 2014, taking thousands of women as sex-slaves.

Five years after she was freed, Ms Hamid was given the chance to confront the man who raped and tormented her several times a day.

The confrontation was broadcast on Iraqi television station Al-Iraqiya, where she recalled how IS member Abu Humam pulled her by her hair before he began raping and abusing her.

“I did not expect them [IS] to rape us because I was only 14. But they restrained us with iron handcuffs and violently raped us,” she said.

Ms Hamid said she was taken along with hundreds of other women to Mosul where she was repeatedly abused by Humam.

uring the confrontation, Ms Hamid began to cry.

She said since she was not in a position to punish him, she wanted the Iraqi Government to deliver due justice for those who have suffered like her.

“Even if I was allowed to kill him, I would not want to get his filth on my hands, but I demand that the government do us right — it’s not just me, because who knows how many Yazidi girls he raped after me.”

During the confrontation, she asked Humam to look up and face her, but he remained fixated with his head hung low and eyes to the ground.

“You destroyed my life,” she continued.

“You robbed me of all my dreams. I was once held by IS, by you, but now you will feel the meaning of torment, torture and loneliness. If you had any feelings, you would not have raped me when I was 14, the age of your son, the age of your daughter,” she added.

Al-Iraqiya TV also interviewed Humam about his treatment of Ms Hamid to which he unapologetically said: “She did not want it so I beat her to make her agree to the rape.”

Thousands of members of the minority Yazidi sect from Iraq were forced into sexual slavery by the jihadists when they surged across the border in 2014 and seized swathes of territory.

More than 3,000 other Yazidis were killed in an onslaught the United Nations later described as genocidal, which prompted the first US air strikes against IS.

Thousands more fled on foot, and many of them remain displaced.abc