Human Rights Watch Director: This is a political purge… pure and simple!
Date posted: January 31, 2017
HizmetNews.Com
Reuters reports that Turkish authorities have dismissed more than 90,000 public servants for alleged connections to a coup attempt in July 2016. Labour Minister Mehmet Muezzinoglu said 125,485 people from the public service had been put through legal proceedings after the coup attempt, and that 94,867 of those had been dismissed so far.
Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch Director, has denounced the purge saying “No one pretends there were 90,000 coup plotters. This is a political purge, pure and simple. Erdogan’s Turkey”
No one pretends there were 90,000 coup plotters. This is a political purge, pure and simple. Erdogan’s Turkey. https://t.co/VBH6qIxYDU
As Reuters reports [Erdogan’s] Turkey has been rooting out followers of the U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen. Erdogan accuses the Gulen’s Hizmet movement of having infiltrated state institutions and plotted to overthrow the government. Gulen has unequivocally denied the allegations and condemned the coup immediately before it was repelled.
The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government, in what many consider an attempt to take revenge on the faith-based Hizmet movement, has been reworking the justice system in Turkey — shutting down certain courts, establishing new ones and quickly assigning some prosecutors and judges to deal with certain cases — which is diametrically opposed to the principles of law.
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In the wake of the coup attempt, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has conducted widespread purges of perceived adversaries. As a result, every university dean in Turkey was forced to resign. Some experts have raised questions about whether the university system will be able to function. The ripple effects to American academics are just starting to emerge.
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Free speech groups condemn Turkey’s closure of 29 publishers after failed coup
Jo Glanville, director of English PEN, said: “The coup posed a serious threat to the Turkish state, but the closing down of publishers, alongside the mass sackings, detentions, arrests and allegations of torture, will have a grave impact on democracy. The crackdown on freedom of expression was already a continuing concern. The coup now appears to be an opportunity for Erdoğan to purge Turkey of his opponents.
Turks Should Question The Official Narrative That Gulen Was Behind The Coup
I am not trying to absolve one side or the other. The coup attempt was a heinous assault on Turkey’s civilian politics and the plotters must be punished in a fashion that deters similar actions in the future. What I am trying to understand is why everyone agrees that Gulenists did it when there is little evidence and that is even questionable.
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