Turkey Continues Its Witch Hunt Against Gülen Followers
Photos of the individuals arrested and detained. Source: Turkish Minute.
Date posted: September 3, 2016
MICHAEL VAN DER GALIEN
The purges continue unabated in Turkey. On Friday, 218 individuals were arrested on charges of being members of a terrorist organization. Another 421 were detained.
These arrests and detentions took place more than 6 weeks after the Turkish military staged a failed coup. In the meantime, not only the military officers responsible for the coup have been arrested, but the same goes for many others: people who had absolutely nothing to do with the coup, but who are simply accused of sympathizing with Fethullah Gülen, the Islamic scholar Turkey says masterminded the coup.
In what’s becoming a repetitive story, a host of journalists, lawyers, teachers and civil servants were among those arrested by the authorities.
All in all, more than 41,000 people have been detained in recent weeks, and more than 22,000 individuals were arrested. According to the latest reports, a sum total of 130,000 people have lost their jobs.
Political madness in Turkey is at its peak. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan does not even refrain from using the term “witch hunt” against the Gülen followers. When Erdoğan and his circle don’t find any evidence, they allegedly try to produce evidence. Bureaucrats who don’t want to be part of Erdoğan’s witch hunt have sent letters to the media and prosecutors confessing what they are doing. Unfortunately, what they said in those letters has been confirmed by later developments.
Fethullah Gülen lawsuit [in the US] thrown out in setback for Turkey’s Erdoğan
A US judge has dismissed a human rights lawsuit against Fethullah Gülen, a US-based Turkish cleric who is a former ally turned prominent critic of his home country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The lawsuit, funded by Turkey, had claimed the Muslim cleric in Pennsylvania orchestrated human rights abuses in his native Turkey.
Sacrificing a legend for a shoebox*
Just to prevent the graft probe…They [AK Party] declined the honor of ending the military tutelage system and also declared the procedures used to achieve this triumph to be “unlawful.” Since they sacrificed the most important victory of their eleven-year rule, we can easily say the following: My friends, this must be one hell of a shoebox!
‘Hizmet conspiracy’ theories rejected at iftar hosted by Alevis
Participants of an iftar held by the Federation of Alevi-Bektaşi Associations under the theme “Solidarity in the light of the Quran” at the Renaissance Polat Hotel in İstanbul on Wednesday evening expressed their disbelief in the existence of any conspiracy prepared by the Hizmet movement.
NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, General Curtis Scaparrotti, said in December that he never had any reason to suspect that Turkish officers in his teams would be involved in a coup attempt. In their absence, and without their expertise, the capacity of his staff had been “degraded,” he told the Financial Times and Deutsche Welle.
Turkish President calls for calm as gov’t defuses tension with Gülen movement
In a bid to de-escalate a heated debate between the government and Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen’s movement surrounding the future of private prep-schools, known as “dershanes,” President Abdullah Gül has called for attention to be focused instead on “more essential issues.” “Development in scientific fields is permanent. The others are daily discussions, today there are […]
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