Category: World

Former Deputy Prime Minister and Parliament Speaker Bülent Arınç, who is currently a member of the Presidential Higher Advisory Board, has described the purge of thousands of civil servants from their jobs in the aftermath of a failed coup as a “disaster,” offering his apologies to the purge victims.

Arınç’s remarks came during an interview on Thursday on the YouTube channel of Kemal Öztürk, the Anadolu news agency’s former general manager.

“There are so many people around me who suffered this tragedy. I feel sorry for them, I have sympathy for them. I am actually apologizing to them. I feel so ashamed when I see the woman who comes to my house to clean because she was purged as the director [of a state agency]. A police officer whose spouse, a fellow police officer, was also purged,” he said.

Turkey experienced a coup attempt on July 15, 2016 that claimed the lives of 249 people and injured a thousand others.

Immediately after the abortive putsch the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement and labeled it as a terrorist organization, while the movement has consistently denied any involvement in the coup or terrorism.

The government, which declared a state of emergency (OHAL) in the aftermath of the coup attempt, removed 150,000 public servants from their jobs through government decrees, known as KHKs, while 30,000 others have been jailed under the pretext of an anti-coup fight.

Arınç also denied having any role in the issuing of the controversial government decrees that affected the lives of so many people.

“They portray me as a person who played a role in the purge of the government workers during the OHAL period. This is a complete lie. … I left active politics during the June 7, 2015 general elections, I did not become a member of parliament. I withdrew from active politics one year before the coup attempt. So I have no signatures on the decrees and bear no responsibility for them,” said Arınç .

Arınç also said an OHAL commission established by the government to look into complaints from individuals who were affected by government decrees during OHAL was not functioning properly.

The OHAL commission rejected 77,600 applications out of the 126,200 it has processed since its establishment in summer 2017, according to a written statement from the commission in August.

After several years of a break from politics, Arınç was appointed as a member of the Presidential Higher Advisory Board by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in May.

A Turkish family under UN protection in Malaysia is being held at Kuala Lumpur International Airport by local officials who are planning to deport them upon a request from Turkey on accusations of membership in the faith-based Gülen movement, according to the Kronos news website.

Malaysian police on Wednesday evening detained Arif Komiş, who was an executive at the Gülen-linked Hibiskus International School, along with his family, the report said.

According to an official document on its website, the UN provided protection to the Komiş family on June 12 after they filed an application for asylum.

The UN in mid-August moved six Gülen-linked teachers from Mongolia to Canada after accepting their asylum applications due to imminent threats from the Turkish government.

In 2017 three Turkish nationals were detained and deported to Turkey by Malaysian officials upon a request from Ankara.

Turkey accuses the Gülen movement of orchestrating a 2016 coup attempt, although it strongly denies any involvement.

Since the failed coup, over 100 individuals have been brought back to Turkey from abroad, while many other countries, most recently Brazil, have rejected Ankara’s requests.

Turkey has been conducting a massive post-coup crackdown targeting Gülen movement followers.

The wife of 42-year-old teacher Özgür Doğan, who was arrested due to his alleged links to the Gülen movement, has called for the immediate release of her husband, who is a stage 4 cancer patient, Bold Medya reported on Monday.

Doğan, who was jailed in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt in July 2016, has been behind bars for 35 months in İzmir’s Kırıklar Prison. In March of this year he was diagnosed with lung cancer, which according to his wife quickly spread to other parts of his body.

Doğan’s wife Seyhan tweeted that her husband is not being released from prison although he is a terminal cancer patient. She said the courts were awaiting a medical report from the Council of Forensic Medicine to release her husband from prison although he has a committee report from the İzmir Katip Çelebi Research Hospital confirming his condition.

Doğan has been receiving chemotherapy at the Katip Çelebi hospital since July 31.

Seyhan Doğan, who is also a teacher but was removed from her job by the government due to Gülen links, said her husband cannot receive proper treatment and that prison conditions are making his condition worse. She said her husband has lost 13 kilograms in jail, dropping from 66 kilograms to 53.

Ahmet Doğan, a Turkish language teacher of 16 years, was removed from his post and jailed in September 2016 on terrorism charges due to his alleged links to the Gülen movement. He was given a prison sentence of eight years nine months a year and a half after his incarceration on charges of membership in a terrorist organization. His dossier is currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court of Appeals.

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.

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 130,000 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.

Dutch police said on Thursday they had arrested a second man in the case of six people who were found in a remote Dutch farmhouse, which has been described as “isolated from the outside world”.

The individuals were discovered on Monday in a small “closed off” room on the ground floor of the house after police received a tip-off from a young man who said he was “worried about his family’s living conditions”.

“Today we arrested a second suspect in the Ruinerwold investigation,” Drenthe police said in a statement, adding the man was detained on suspicion of “unlawful deprivation of liberty”.

“The arrested person, a 67-year-old man from Ruinerwold, is one of the six persons discovered this Monday in the house.”

A 58-year-old man, who was paying the rent on the property, was arrested on Tuesday and charged on Thursday with unlawful detention and harming others’ health.

He will remain in detention for at least two more weeks, prosecutors said.

The Austrian Foreign Ministry said the man was an Austrian citizen, originally from Vienna.

The farmhouse is in Ruinerwold, Drenthe province in the northeast of the Netherlands.

A police statement said it was not clear whether the people found in the house were held against their will.

It’s thought they had been living there since 2010.

According to the police, those discovered said they were a family — a father with five of his children —all of whom indicated that they were aged over 18.

Local media reported the individuals have held apocalyptic “end of days” beliefs, but police could not confirm this information to Euronews.

They have been examined by a doctor and are being cared for.

The farmhouse is hidden behind trees away from the main road, accessible only via a bridge over a canal. Neighbours told regional television that no-one suspected a family was living there.

Some said they occasionally tried to approach the property but never entered. They sometimes encountered a man who was polite and had a dog.

Jans Keizer — who told RTV Drenthe he and his wife offered his new neighbour flowers and a bottle of wine upon his arrival — also said he subsequently thought things strange. “That gate by his bridge was always locked. You did not enter the yard. I once tried to look around with a neighbour one evening. Then we saw a camera hanging in a tree,” he is quoted as saying.

Police say they want to do their research “thoroughly and carefully”.

“We have started a Large Scale Investigation Team. Investigators are examining possible criminal offences under the leadership of the Public Prosecution Service,” they said in a statement.

Finance and Treasury Minister Berat Albayrak on Monday announced that former Halkbank director Hakan Atilla was appointed as the director general of Borsa Istanbul, Turkey’s main stock exchange.

“The resting period for Hakan Atilla, who was reunited with his family and country following an unjust conviction, is over. He will start his duty as Borsa Istanbul’s Director General,” pro-government newspaper Yeni Akit quoted Albayrak as saying.

Atilla served 32 months in prison in the United States for helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions, and was released on July 19 this year.

The trial of the former Halkbank executive made international headlines with allegations of involvement in the scheme by several senior officials in Turkey, including President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

A Manhattan federal court indicted Halkbank, the second-largest state-owned bank in Turkey, with fraud, money laundering, and involvement in sanctions evasion, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Tuesday.

Atilla’s trial helped establish the bank’s connection, according to the statement.

The indictment included references to President Erdoğan and Minister Albayrak, who is Erdoğan’s son-in-law.

At the request of Iranian-Turkish businessman Reza Zarrab, “the then-Prime Minister of Turkey and his associates, including a relative of the then-Prime Minister who later held multiple Turkish cabinet positions, instructed Halkbank to resume the scheme,” it said.ahvalnews

A 27-year-old Belgian-Turkish law student is being held in Turkey where she was reportedly arrested more than a month ago over a series of years-old Facebook posts about the Kurds, The Brussels Times reported.

Dual national Gülsüm Çetinkaya was arrested while travelling with her Kurdish parents in Turkey in July, and her relatives worry that she may be held there longer.

She was checked at the border with Bulgaria and immediately detained, her uncle, filmmaker Bülent Öztürk, told Het Nieuwsblad.

Originally from Antwerp, Çetinkaya, who is studying law at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), was recently released from the Turkish prison where she was held, thousands of kilometers from her family’s village, Öztürk told the outlet. But she is still not allowed to leave the country.

“She was in prison for 40 days,” her uncle said, adding that Çetinkaya had told him the cell she was kept in was “tiny” and unsanitary.

Foreign affairs authorities in Belgium are reportedly looking into the situation, but the government cannot interfere if a dual national is held in their second country, according to media reports. (turkishminute.com)

Turkish prosecutors have issued detention warrants for 18 individuals in the western province of İzmir on allegations of being followers of the Gülen movement, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

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

The individuals facing detention warrants include active duty police officers as well as officers who were removed from their jobs by the government in the aftermath of the failed coup.

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 130,000 people were removed from state jobs while in excess of 30,000 others were jailed, and nearly 600,000 people have been investigated on allegations of terrorism.

Police on Thursday detained 17 people who took part in a demonstration in Turkey’s capital city of Ankara in protest of a recent decision by the Turkish government to remove three elected Kurdish mayors from office, Turkish media reports said.

In a controversial move on Monday, the Interior Ministry removed the mayors of Mardin, Van and Diyarbakır in southeastern Turkey, claiming they had links to the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The mayors were elected from the ranks of the Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in the March 31 local elections.

Police intervened during the demonstration and detained 17 protestors who had gathered in front of the HDP’s Mamak district office to speak out against the removal of the mayors.

The detentions reportedly took place because the Ankara Governor’s Office has banned all demonstrations, marches and press statement releases in public venues.

In the meantime, police in İzmir detained 26 lawyers and one journalist during a similar protest earlier on Thursday.

Ayşegül Tözeren, a columnist for the Evrensel daily and a poet, was detained by police early Tuesday on suspicion of terrorist links, according to Fatih Polat, the editor-in-chief of the daily.

“I spoke with Ayşegül’s mother by phone. ‘There are many police officers at our home. They are taking Ayşegül into custody. They aren’t saying anything about it,’ she said,” Polat tweeted, adding that her lawyer would not be able to see Tözeren for at least 24 hours.

Her lawyer was later told by officials that Tözeren was being investigated for alleged ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist group, which has been waging an insurgency in Turkey’s Southeast for decades.

In a column on Tuesday Polat criticized the detention, saying that such investigations into journalists could be conducted without a police raid on their homes.

In the aftermath of a 2016 coup attempt Turkey jailed over a thousand journalists on terrorism charges.

Turkey was ranked 157th among 180 countries in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index released in April by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

The whereabouts of six men reportedly abducted by Turkish police continue to remain unknown over 100 days later, opposition channel Artı TV reported on Saturday.

Erkan Irmak, Salim Zeybek, Özgür Kaya, Yasin Ugan, Mustafa Yılmaz and Gökhan Türkmen have been missing for months after being forced onto vehicles by police officers, according to eyewitnesses, and their families have been told by officials there is no information about their whereabouts, host of news programme ‘’Haber Peşinde’’ (news pursuit) Erk Acarer said.

This should pose a serious concern for Turkey, whose government this week lauded its legal system and revealed a new round of legal reforms based on rights and freedoms and the administration of the legal system, he noted.

The reforms, announced by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, arrived on the heels of a condemnatory EU annual report on Turkey, criticising Ankara’s failure to demonstrate progress crucial areas for accession, including rule of law and basic rights and freedoms.

None of these detentions are ordinary and remain in violation of a state of law, Acarer said, adding that when asking about the detainees, their families are told they with ‘’the state’’ and not to ‘’probe’’ into the matter.

Yasin Ugan and Özgür Kaya were taken away in a white van in Ankara’s Altındağ district on Feb. 12 after men with automatic rifles who said they were undercover police, according to eyewitness accounts, raided their home.

Salim Zeybek  was also abducted by a group of gunmen in Turkey’s northwestern Edirne province on the night of Feb. 21, according to several tweets posted by a twitter account claiming to belong to his wife.

There have been increasing reports of disappearances in Turkey since the failed coup attempt of July 2016. In most accounts, the victims were reportedly forced on white or black commercial vehicles and attempts to locate them have failed.