Category: World

A high criminal court in İstanbul has rejected an objection filed by the lawyer of prominent Turkish journalist and writer Ahmet Altan to his re-arrest one week after Altan’s release from prison, Turkish media reports said.

The 69-year-old journalist’s arrest came shortly after a Turkish court on Tuesday reversed a previous ruling to release him on appeal after convicting him of aiding a terrorist organization. The ruling was challenged by a prosecutor immediately after the hearing. Altan was detained by police officers at his İstanbul home on Tuesday evening and transported to the jail on Wednesday.

Altan lawyer Figen Çalıkuşu filed an objection against Altan’s re-arrest, but the İstanbul 28th High Criminal Court on Thursday rejected the objection.

Journalists Altan and Nazlı Ilıcak were sentenced last week to 10 years, six months and eight years, nine months in prison, respectively, for “aiding a terrorist group without membership in it” but were released by the court pending appeal. A third journalist, Professor Mehmet Altan, who was also tried in the same proceedings, was acquitted due to a lack of evidence against him.

One of Turkey’s most famous writers and journalists, Altan was first arrested after a 2016 failed coup on charges of supporting the coup attempt. He has spent a total of 1,138 days in prison.

Turkish NBA player Enes Kanter, a vocal critic of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, teamed up with two Democratic US senators on Tuesday as they introduced a bill to condemn the alleged violation of human rights in Turkey, according to Reuters.

As Erdoğan arrived in the United States for a White House meeting on Wednesday with US President Donald Trump, Senators Edward Markey and Ron Wyden held up Kanter as a victim of the Turkish government’s targeting of political rivals.

Turkey seeks the international arrest and extradition of the Boston Celtics center over his links to US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, accused of orchestrating a failed coup in 2016. Kanter has also had his passport canceled and has not been able to travel abroad with his team.

“President Erdoğan is conducting one of the biggest campaigns to restrict rights and freedoms anywhere in the world,” said Markey, pointing to the arrests or imprisonment of 80,000 citizens and closure of associations and media organizations in opposition to the government.

Kanter said Americans should feel “very lucky and blessed” to have a country with democracy, freedom and human rights.

“Sadly none of this is in my country, but it’s just amazing to see support from not just these two gentlemen but from my teammates, from my coaches and from all these fans,” Kanter said. “So that is why I cannot thank America enough.”

A Turkish court has ruled to continue the pretrial detention of a woman arrested two weeks ago despite the submission of a medical report confirming her pregnancy of six months and the existence of a law prohibiting it, the tr724 news website reported.

Kimya Bozkurt was arrested on Oct. 21 on charges of membership in the faith-based Gülen movement, which is accused of orchestrating a 2016 coup attempt despite its strong denial of any involvement.

According to her husband, after her arrest the court demanded a medical report confirming her pregnancy; however, despite the report later submitted to the judges, her incarceration continued.

Turkish law requires postponement of the arrest of pregnant women until they give birth and the infant reaches six months of age.

Detained on Oct. 19, Bozkurt was alleged to have used ByLock, a smartphone application believed by Turkish authorities to have been popular among the movement’s followers.

Bozkurt was also charged with membership in a Gülen-affiliated association, among the hundreds of associations shut down in the aftermath of the failed coup.

Since the failed coup in July 2016, Turkey has been conducting a massive witch-hunt against people from all walks of life on charges of “coup involvement.”

Many women jailed with their young children immediately after delivery or while pregnant are believed to be linked to the Gülen movement.

Tacettin Toprak, a 36-year-old teacher who was purged from his job by the Turkish government in the aftermath of a failed coup in July 2016, died shortly after he was released from prison, according to Turkish media reports over the weekend.

Toprak was among the thousands of teachers who were removed from their posts and subsequently jailed due to their alleged links to the Gülen movement, which is accused by the Turkish government of masterminding the coup attempt. The movement strongly denies any involvement in the failed putsch.

Toprak was suffering from bladder cancer when he was arrested in the western province of Manisa following the abortive putsch. During the three years he spent in prison, he reportedly did not receive proper treatment and the cancer spread to his lungs. Although he repeatedly asked for his release from prison due to his medical condition, all his requests were turned down by the courts until Aug. 3 of this year.

The former teacher died on Aug. 23 and was laid to rest in Manisa the following day. He is survived by his wife and two young children.

There have been many deaths in Turkey’s prison among the victims of a massive purge launched by the Turkish government against the followers of the Gülen movement as they have either been denied proper treatment or not released from jail to receive necessary treatment.

urkish police late on Thursday detained a niece of Fethullah Gülen, a US-based Turkish cleric who is accused of masterminding a 2016 coup attempt despite his strong denial of any involvement, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

Zeynep Gülen, 30, daughter of the late Salih Gülen, was driving a car when she was stopped by officers in İstanbul’s Beykoz district.

The police brought her to headquarters after she presented a fake identity card. Her fingerprints later revealed her true identity.

Turkey launched a large-scale crackdown targeting Gülen followers after the failed coup, conducting mass detentions on an almost daily basis.

Yesterday, Zehra Bozkurt, the daughter of a high-ranking member of the Gülen movement, was detained, along with 16 other followers.

The chief public prosecutors in Ankara and Adana on Friday issued detention warrants for 95 suspects over alleged Gülen links.

At least 70 people were detained in the resulting police operations, the report said, adding that one of the detainees was a cousin of Adil Öksüz, a prime suspect in the 2016 coup attempt.

Following the abortive putsch, 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.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday said he has not yet decided about a visit to the US that was scheduled for Nov. 13.

“I have not yet made up my mind,” Erdoğan said. “There are question marks.”

Erdoğan’s statement came a day after the US House of Representatives voted to recognize Ottoman-era mass killings of Armenians as genocide and called for sanctions against Ankara.

Speaking to his party’s parliamentary group in Ankara, Erdoğan said the US “has no right to lecture Turkey as its own history is full of genocide and slavery.”

On Oct. 24 he told state broadcaster TRT that he would accept US President Donald Trump’s invitation for the visit.

President Trump also confirmed the visit on Oct. 8. “He is coming to the US as my guest on November 13th,” he tweeted.

The mass deportation of hundreds of thousands of Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks in 1915 is seen as genocide by many historians and has been recognized as such by a number of governments.

While Turkey acknowledges the death of many Armenians during World War I, it denies that the killings were systematic and premeditated and firmly rejects the label of genocide.

A chief advisor to Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), has called for the vandalizing of houses belonging to followers of the Gülen movement, which is accused by the Turkish government of masterminding a failed coup in 2016.

The advisor, Metin Özkan, was one of the speakers at a program on CNN Türk on Wednesday night when he made the controversial remarks. During the program Özkan expressed his sadness over the vandalizing with red paint of the house of an Alevi family in the western province of İzmir, which has been on the country’s agenda for the past couple of days.

Appealing to the perpetrators of the attack, he said: “If only they had painted red crosses on the houses of FETÖ members. In that case, we’d be able to identify them immediately.”

FETÖ is a term coined by the Turkish government to refer to the Gülen movement as a terrorist organization, although the movement strongly denies involvement in any terrorist activity and the coup attempt.“Whatever you do to FETÖ members is fine,” he added.The MHP official attracted widespread criticism on social media for fomenting hatred among the public and promoting a hate crime.

Following the coup attempt, the Turkish government launched a massive crackdown on followers of the Gülen 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.turkishminute

Seven Turks — two women and five children — who drowned when a boat carrying 19 people capsized on Sept. 27 in the eastern Aegean Sea, were buried on the Greek island of Chios on Wednesday, Bold Medya reported.

The boat was carrying Turkish academics and jurists and their family members who had to flee the country due to an ongoing government crackdown on followers of the Gülen movement.

The Turkish government accuses the Gülen movement of masterminding a failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016 and labels it a “terrorist organization,” although the movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.

The academics and judicial members were among the more than 150,000 public servants who were removed from their posts by the government in the aftermath of the coup attempt due to their alleged links to the Gülen movement. The government also revoked their passports.

Among the victims were 4-month old Mahir Işık and 3-year-old İbrahim Işık, the children of two judges, Fatma and Nasır Işık, who survived the tragedy.

Twelve-year-old Mustafa Said Zenbil, 40-year-old Meltem Zenbil and her mother 58-year-old Kevser Sezer were the family members of Oğuz Zenbil, who survived the tragedy with his elder son, Bedirhan.

Oğuz Zenbil was an academic at a university in Konya that was closed down by the Turkish government due to its alleged links to the Gülen movement.

The two other victims of the tragedy were identified as 6-year-old Mustafa Kara and 8-year-old Gülsüm Kara; however, there was no information regarding their family members.

The survivors of the tragedy attended the funerals on Chios, where local administrators also extended their support for preparation of the ceremonies and burial of the victims.

In the meantime, Turkish journalist Murat Sevinç, who writes for the Gazete Duvar news website, harshly criticized some Turkish media outlets and journalists who reported on the news of the boat tragedy, saying, “Fetö members drowned in the Aegean Sea.”

Fetö is a term coined by the Turkish government to refer to the Gülen movement as a terrorist organization.

“I feel really bad, dear reader. I feel so bad. I cannot accept what has happened to those children and their parents. I cannot understand who could write such news, how they can be so indifferent and how they can say, ‘It was well deserved.’ I cannot understand this level [of inhumanity]… I want to spit on the conscience of all,” Sevinç wrote.

US online streaming service Netflix has applied for a license to continue operating in Turkey under new online broadcasting rules, the head of the country’s television watchdog said on Tuesday.

The Netflix Turkey office also confirmed it with a statement, adding that they are in talks with the authorities to tighten parental controls on their content.

“Our goal is effectively protecting our children from content that is not appropriate for their ages while providing services for our subscribers’ enjoyment,” the statement said.

Netflix has around 1.5 million subscribers in Turkey.

Turkey’s conservatives have been criticizing Netflix streams for being against the country’s “values.”

Turkey last month granted its radio and television watchdog sweeping oversight over all online content, including streaming platforms and online news outlets, in a move that raised concerns about possible censorship.

Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) President Ebubekir Şahin also said on Twitter that more than 600 institutions, including local streaming platforms Puhu TV and Blu TV, had applied for licenses.

The new regulation stipulates that content providers should secure a new license to continue operating in Turkey and comply with RTÜK guidelines.

If they fail to respect the guidelines, they will be given 30 days to change their content or face having their licenses suspended for three months or possibly canceled. The announcement last month did not specify what standards RTÜK would expect.

Critics have said the move would allow the government to tighten its grip on the Turkish media, which is largely owned or controlled by supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ruling party.

The pro-government Sabah daily reported that Osman Karaca, a Turkish educator living in Mexico, has forcibly been brought back to Turkey by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT).

“Karaca was arrested on charges of ‘founding and masterminding an armed terrorist organization,” the daily reported.

Turkish government holds the Gulen movement responsible for the July 15, 2016 coup attempt while the latter denies involvement. More than 126,000 people have been detained over ties to the movement in Turkey so far while President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier called on foreign governments to punish Gulen followers in their own countries.

More than 100 people were forcibly returned from abroad so far, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

Speaking to media on the second anniversary of the July 15, 2016 failed coup, Cavusoglu said the government rounded up over 100 such people abroad and brought them back to Turkey as part of investigations.

“We brought back several leading F..O members from abroad. It made it into the news on some occasions and didn’t on others. We didn’t speak about some of those in the media at the request of the countries they were brought from. We can say that we have brought back over 100 leading F..O members from several countries,” Cavusoglu said