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.
Questions to challenge the primary and unjustified premise: What judicial (or other) process determined that these corruption investigations were a coup attempt against the government? What proof or evidence do you have to support this most serious claim? What disciplinary process did you undertake to determine that the people that were purged were members and culprits of this ‘coup’? In the absence of evidence and disciplinary process how did you determine these people’s association with Hizmet? When is government corruption not a judicial coup? How can you have the right to unilaterally determine the intent and purpose of these ongoing judicial investigations when your government is implicated in them? If your government can purge over 7,000 police officers (and thereby affect and prevent these investigations) without evidence, due process or disciplinary procedure, do you not set a precedent for every future potentially corrupt government to follow?
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