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.
Yet, no matter how strong of views he might voice to his interlocutors about the Gülen movement (Cemaat) he can’t save himself from the problem of credibility. While he was giving assurance in Brussels that he is not interfering with the judiciary, the fact that the very same day the pressure exerted by the undersecretary of the Justice Ministry to the chief prosecutor in his investigation on a corruption case was revealed through documents will lead the EU to approach these assurances with suspicion.
A Turkish family has disappeared in Pakistan, and suspicion turns to intelligence agencies
“The police are expressing ignorance about the picking up of Mr. Mesut, so who did this?” asked Muhammed Zubair, a doctor whose children attended the PakTurk school in Peshawar and who represents the parent-teacher association. “This is a dangerous trend and will send a negative image of Pakistan abroad.”
Turkish Teachers In Kazakhstan Fear Going Home
Despite promises by Nazarbaev not to return Turkish citizens to Turkey, the country’s bureaucracy is throwing up roadblocks to make it possible to stay in Kazakhstan. Political scientist Aidos Sarim accuses low-level bureaucrats of failing to follow Nazarbaev’s orders.
Turkey’s New Anti-Americanism (NY Times Editorial)
The Turks need to be reminded that Mr. Gulen has a legal right to be in the United States, and that the Justice Department would have to go through a rigorous process before deciding whether he could be handed over, especially to a country where due process is increasingly unlikely and torture is reportedly used against detainees.
Hizmet Movement is not interested in attaining political power in Turkey or elsewhere in the world
[Erdogan] has called Hizmet a state within a state, which to me is a strange characterization. To me, that’s like saying that the Catholics are a state within a state in America, or the Jews, a state within a state in America. Those kinds of statements are derogatory, they’re pejoratives. Catholics have a right to seek influence in America; Jews have a right to seek influence in America, that’s how we operate here.
Reuters interview Gulen, he says he would not flee U.S. to avoid extradition to Turkey
Fethullah Gulen, the U.S.-based Muslim cleric accused by Turkey of instigating last year’s failed coup, says he has no plans to flee the United States and would accept extradition if Washington agrees to a request by Ankara to hand him over.
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