Turkey arrests Fethullah Gulen’s barber from 26 years ago
Date posted: April 15, 2017
At least 16 people have been detained in the western province of Izmir, including a 50-year-old hairdresser, identified as İ.D., who used to give haircut to Fethullah Gülen during 1990s.
Police carried out operations to round up 16 suspects in Adana, Antalya and Hatay provinces as well as in Izmir’s Cesme district, as part of an investigation into the Gulen movement, over the past days.
According to state-run Anadolu news agency on Friday, I.D. was put in pre-trial arrest along with 2 others over charges of membership to a terrorist organization while 5 were released on judicial control.
The remaining 8 suspects were still waiting to give their testimonies to the prosecutor on Friday.
The government accuses Fethullah Gulen and the Gulen movement of being behind the July 15 coup attempt. Some 115,000 have been detained over Gulen links since last summer while critics often raise the issue of guilt by association. Gulen, meanwhile, denies any involvement.
A Turkish family of four has settled in New Hampshire, fleeing a crackdown in their homeland that has led to the arrests of thousands of civil servants. They can’t go home but they can’t stay here forever; the tourist visas that brought them here will expire. So they wait, and they worry.
Pak-Turk schools: Parents urge government against transferring administration to Erdogan-linked organization
“All the Turkish teachers and administrators have left Pakistan and the schools are being run by Pakistanis,” said one of the parents Syed Amir Abdullah. He added that the government still seemed hell bent on ruining these institutions by handing them over to an ‘infamous organisation’ which has no experience of running them.
WaPo publishes editorial from Fethullah Gulen on the day Erdogan meets Trump
If nothing else, the timing of this is certainly interesting. Yesterday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Washington for his meeting with President Trump scheduled for later today. It’s an encounter which I already described as problematic at best, given Erdogan’s new status as a strongman and tyrant, and it doesn’t seem to hold the promise of much benefit on our part.
AKP: What is next?
Neither Erdoğan nor his bureaucrats could convince the public that their plan was educational, and not an attempt to punish the Hizmet movement. Gül, Arınç and several of Erdoğan’s ministers couldn’t stop Erdoğan, who started a war against the Hizmet movement and even directly attacked Fethullah Gülen by taking remarks Gülen made about the headscarf ban 15 years ago completely out of context.
‘Well, you were saying Hizmet is a religious movement?’
The Hizmet movement is considered a civil society organization, an indispensable element in democratic societies. In democracies, elections truly matter. The will of voters is indisputably important. However, there is also another power, called public opinion. They influence the parties and administrations.
Abduction of Kacmaz family – An act of high-handedness
President Erdogan is urging many countries, including Pakistan, to close these schools and deport the Turkish staff. So far, only four out of 176 countries, where international Turkish schools are located, have given a positive response to Erdogan’s demand.
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