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Cevheri Güven

Exiled Turkish businessman Akın İpek has said members of the Turkish government and judiciary who are behind the confiscation of his family’s assets valued at $10 billion as part of a government-led crackdown will eventually appear in international courts and account for their unlawful deeds.

İpek’s remarks came during an exclusive interview with Turkish Minute on Thursday.

The businessman was thrust into the spotlight again after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan publicly targeted him on Wednesday, saying that those like the “person in the UK” do not have the right to own property due to their links to the Gülen movement, accused by the Turkish government of masterminding a failed coup in July 2016. The movement strongly denies any involvement in the abortive putsch.“They don’t have such a thing as the right to own property. They owe a huge debt to the public. This person in the UK, how is he going to pay the debt he owes? He should return to this country. That is what we’re fighting for and will continue to fight for,” Erdoğan said before departing for a visit to Azerbaijan.

Living in the UK since 2015, İpek was CEO of İpek Printing House and Koza Holding, which were seized in 2015. He was also the owner of a large media corporation that operated two TV stations, two newspapers and a radio station which were all subsequently shut down by Erdoğan’s government.

Response to Erdoğan

According to a report drafted by London Advocacy, the combined value of schools, universities, dormitories, foundations and associations seized over Gülen-related investigations amounts to $35 billion, while the exact amount of assets confiscated from businesspeople is unknown.

Accused by Erdoğan of being a terrorist and denied the right to own property, Akın said the reason Erdoğan has been targeting him and his family is money.

“After the authorities failed to find any irregularities in our companies, they came up with the idea of appointing government trustees in 2015. In order to do that, they used expert reports that later turned out to be fake. As I am outside the country, my trial cannot proceed, and they are unable to confiscate my [personal] stock,” İpek said.

“My brother Tekin and my mother’s shares were insufficient to control the company, so they seized the shares belonging to Tekin’s wife, too. To be able to do that, they sentenced them all to prison, my mother to 20 years and my brother Tekin to 90 years. What’s the difference between that and capital punishment?”

“This is the burden that our family has to bear. This is why I say they are committing murder for money.”

Turkish prosecutors have issued detention warrants for more than 350 people in the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), the Gülhane Education and Research Hospital (GATA) and the Health Ministry in three separate operations due to their alleged links to the Gülen movement.

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.

As part of the largest operation into alleged members of the Gülen movement in the TSK, Turkish prosecutors have issued detention warrants for 304 people, most of whom are active duty military officers.

In the early hours of Tuesday, police teams began to conduct raids across 50 provinces as part of the İzmir-based operation to detain the suspects, who are accused of communicating with Gülen movement members through pay phones to avoid detection.

The suspects facing detention include five colonels, one lieutenant colonel, one major, 10 captains, 58 lieutenants, 221 noncommissioned officers, seven special sergeants and one civilian. While 193 of the suspects are from the Land Forces Command, 111 are with the Air Forces Command.

As part of the operation at GATA, whose former name, Gülhane Military Medical Academy, was changed following the coup attempt, detention warrants were issued for 37 people, 31 of whom are doctors. The suspects include two professors, five associate professors, five purged colonels, one retired colonel, five purged lieutenant colonels, an active duty major, two active-duty captains and a purged lieutenant.

As part of the third operation at the Health Ministry, detention warrants have been issued for 10 Health Ministry personnel, who have been detained. The detainees include three currently working doctors, three purged doctors, two doctors who resigned from their jobs, one retired doctor and one nurse. The detainees are accused of having a bank account at the Bank Asya, which was closed following the coup attempt due to its links to the Gülen movement; and using ByLock, a mobile phone application considered by Turkish authorities to be a secret tool of communication among Gülen movement members. Prosecutors have reportedly obtained statements from informants concerning their Gülen movement membership.

The operations targeting healthcare personnel come at a time when the Turkish healthcare system is overwhelmed by the soaring number of coronavirus cases in the country.

Following the coup attempt the Turkish government removed more than 130,000 civil servants from their jobs due to alleged Gülen links.

According to a statement from Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu on Nov. 26, a total of 292,000 people have been detained while 96,000 others have been jailed due to alleged links to the Gülen movement since the failed coup. The minister said there are currently 25,655 people in Turkey’s prisons who were jailed due to links to the Gülen movement.

Since the coup attempt, followers of the Gülen movement have been subjected to a massive crackdown, with the Turkish government and pro-government media outlets demonizing its members.

In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.

Muhammet Ali Taş, one of more than 300 former military cadets who were sentenced to life in prison for “attempting to overthrow the government” and allegedly participating in an abortive putsch in Turkey in July 2016, was severely beaten by six prison guards, the Bold Medya news website reported on Monday.

The incident was revealed on social media on Monday by Melek Çetinkaya, the mother of another former military cadet behind bars, who said Taş was brutally beaten by prison guards in Turkey’s notorious Silivri Prison, where most political prisoners are held.

“Military cadet Muhammed Ali Taş was beaten by the guards until he passed out. Our lawyer is on his way to Silivri [Prison] right now,” Çetinkaya said in a tweet addressed to Turkey’s justice and defense ministries.

According to the lawyer’s statements, which were also shared on social media by Çetinkaya, Taş was taken to prison guard Ramazan Kuyucu’s room after having an argument with another inmate on Dec. 4. He was severely beaten there by Kuyucu and five others while his hands were tied behind his back. The lawyer said Taş told him he was beaten until he lost consciousness.

Kuyucu reportedly swore at the military cadet and made fun of him, asking how he liked the beating while hitting him. The lawyer also underlined that his client was stripped by the guards, kept in a filthy room for two hours and then made to walk through the corridors of the prison with head down as part of psychological torture.

The prison authorities, who didn’t send the complaint filed by Taş after the incident to the Bakırköy Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office despite receiving it in a sealed envelope, also refused to speak to his attorney.

The lawyer, who found out about the beating after speaking to Taş’s family members, indicated that he saw bruises and marks of beating on his client’s face when he visited him in prison on Monday.

“Military cadets are currently serving time in prison on charges related to the coup attempt that they had no prior knowledge about. Now those cadets are allegedly being tortured behind bars. The Justice Ministry should immediately release a statement about these claims and punish the perpetrators,” Abdülkadir Karaduman, a lawmaker from the Felicity Party (SP), tweeted.

Speaking to ARTI TV, pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputy Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, one of Turkey’s most prominent human rights defenders, said he addressed a parliamentary question to Justice Minister Abdülhamit Gül, knowing that this human rights violation would be covered up by the ministry just like others before it.

“A military cadet who ended up behind bars at the age of 19 and who has been there for five years now is also being tortured. The cases of torture in Turkish prisons, unfortunately, increased in 2020. The prisons are being managed arbitrarily, and thus people have the opportunity and environment to beat someone they don’t like,” the lawmaker added.

Cevheri Güven-turkishminute

German authorities have taken action to deport a Turkish teacher, who applied for asylum in the country, to Turkey where he faces an arrest warrant due to his links to the Gülen movement, accused by the Turkish government of masterminding a failed coup in 2016.The movement strongly denies any involvement in the failed putsch.

Mustafa Kaşka is one of the thousands of individuals who had to flee Turkey to avoid a massive crackdown the Turkish government launched on the Gülen movement followers in the aftermath of the failed coup. The teacher, who applied for asylum in Germany on Nov.25 but denied an asylum, was taken from a refugee camp in the German city of Giesen on Tuesday by police officers and taken to the Frankfurt Airport for deportation. The appeal process for the teacher’s denied asylum application is still under way.

Kaşka, who had a nervous breakdown as he was being taken to the plane, saying he would be arrested if he is sent back to Turkey, was taken down from the plane stairs and taken to a police station in Darmstadt.

The teacher was the director of a student dormitory in the western Turkish province of İzmir. The student dormitory, where he worked, was closed down due to its links to the Gülen movement following the coup attempt. Kaşkar, who began to work as a teacher at a private school in İzmir, was later fired from his job in 2018 based on an order from the İzmir Governor’s Office due to his ties to the Gülen movement.

The teacher told Turkish Minute over a phone interview in the police station in Darmstadt that being a director at a Gülen-linked organization is for the Turkish government tantamount to being a leader in a terrorist organization as the Turkish government describes the group as a terrorist organization.

Kaşkar said he fears to be tortured in Turkey where there are widespread claims and reports about maltreatment and torture of the inmates in prisons.

“I know that those, who are tried on charges of terrorist organization leadership, are subjected to torture. That’s why I went into hiding in Turkey and decided to flee. I looked for a way to flee for months. I had to remain in hiding for one-and-half years. Then, I could finally make my way to Greece by crossing the Evros River on a refugee boat on Sept. 23, 2019. I came to Germany on Nov. 25, 2019 and applied for an asylum,” Kaşkar told Turkish Minute.

Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) denied Kaşkar’s asylum application but the teacher appealed BAMF’s decision at a Germany court and the appeal process is still pending.

The teacher said he cannot understand why the German authorities are seeking to deport him when his appeal process is still in progress. He said BAMF’s denial of his asylum application was wrong in the first place, because he handed over all the necessary documents as well as a decision by a Turkish court showing an arrest warrant for him.

“I am just a teacher. I did not commit any crime. I don’t want to spend my life in prison due to my political views. I am calling on rights organizations and the public to raise their voices against my deportation and I expect BAMF to examine my asylum case again,” said the teacher.

According to a statement from Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu on Nov. 26, a total of 292,000 people have been detained while 96,000 others have been jailed due to alleged links to the Gülen movement since the failed coup. The minister said there are currently 25,655 people in Turkey’s prisons who were jailed due to links to the Gülen movement.

Turkey and Russia have agreed to monitor a truce over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave from a joint peacekeeping center, the Turkish defense ministry said on Tuesday.

The deal came after talks between Turkish and Russian officials as to how the two regional powers would implement a Moscow-brokered ceasefire signed in November between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The two countries concluded the technical details for setting up the joint center and had signed an agreement, the defense ministry said in a statement.

The ministry tweeted that the necessary work was underway to get the center operational as soon as possible, reminding that on November 11 a memorandum of understanding had been signed via video conference by the Turkish and Russian defense ministers, Hulusi Akar and Sergey Shoigu.

The Turkish Parliament on Nov. 17 approved a presidential motion that sought permission for the deployment of Turkish troops in Azerbaijan.

The Turkish troops will be responsible for monitoring the ceasefire agreement that followed six weeks of intense fighting between the two countries.

The motion, which is valid for one year, leaves it to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to determine the number of troops to be sent.

Turkey’s Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSK) on Friday named 11 judges and prosecutors, many of whom played critical roles in government-led prosecutions, as new members of the Supreme Court of Appeals.

The list included Selfet Giray, chief justice of the Ankara 4th High Criminal Court, which ruled the day before on the most important mass trial, known as the Akıncı case, regarding a coup attempt in 2016. The court delivered life sentences without parole to 291 defendants and life with the possibility of parole to 46 defendants. Eighty defendants were acquitted of charges and 58 received lesser sentences.

Turkey experienced a controversial military coup attempt on the night of July 15, 2016 which, according to many, was a false flag aimed at entrenching the authoritarian rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan by rooting out dissidents and eliminating powerful actors such as the military in his desire for absolute power.

According to the Turkish government, Akıncı Airbase was the command center for the failed coup, and Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar was held there after allegedly being taken hostage by coup plotters. Everyone at the airbase that night was accused of taking part in the coup.

Gen Akar himself claimed he was held hostage at an airbase outside Ankara by the coup plotters. Yet, the CCTV footage of the night showed Akar leaving the headquarters and taking a helicopter without any sign of coercion. In one scene, Akar was seen asking one of his would-be abductors to bring his cap and the soldier rushing to follow his orders.

The courts have now concluded almost all of the 289 trials related to the coup attempt and have convicted more than 4,000 people.

Legal professionals have criticized the use of mass trials against thousands accused of even vague involvement in the coup, including convictions handed down to army cadets and others who were ordered out onto the streets that night with little knowledge of what was going on.

Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor Yüksel Kocaman, who ordered the detention of 82 prominent pro-Kurdish politicians last September, is also among those appointed to serve at the Supreme Court of Appeals. The detentions had come only a few days after Kocaman visited Turkish President Erdoğan at the presidential palace with his bride immediately after their wedding and received gifts there.

Another well-known figure who was selected to serve at the Supreme Court of Appeals is İrfan Fidan, the İstanbul chief public prosecutor. Fidan had taken over what is known as the December 17 and December 25, 2013 corruption investigations, which implicated then-Prime Minister Erdoğan, his family members and his inner circle, after the prosecutors and police officers working on the case were removed from their positions.

Fidan dropped the charges against 96 suspects including Bilal Erdoğan, son of President Erdoğan, four government ministers and Iranian-Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab, who later admitted in a New York court to leading a sanctions busting scheme that had helped Iran evade US sanctions with the help of Turkish banks, yielding Iran an estimated $13 billion. Zarrab also admitted to bribing senior politicians and bureaucrats in the process.