Couple jailed for watching Fethullah Gülen videos at Internet cafe
Date posted: April 20, 2017
An Ankara couple has been sent to prison after they were caught watching videos belonging to US-based Turkish scholar Fethullah Gülen at an internet cafe earlier this week.
Doğan news agency reported on Wednesday that acting on a tip from the internet café owner, police tailed the suspects — Y.M. and M.M. — and detained later them for watching the videos.
The suspects were reportedly sent to an Ankara prison early on Wednesday.
The Turkish government accuses Fethullah Gülen and the Gülen movement of being behind the July 15 coup attempt. Some 115,000 have been detained over Gülen links since last summer while critics often raise the issue of guilt by association. Gülen, meanwhile, strongly denies any involvement.
Bekir Cinar was working as an assistant professor at the political sciences department of Suleyman Sah University when it fell victim to the crackdown. He says that many academics with different views were working at the university. Cinar is currently continuing his scientific work at a British university. He considers this a major loss for Turkey, not least because it takes 20 to 30 years to become an academic.
AK Party’s power poisoning
The AK Party is still committed to making its identity dominant and transforming the state; its attempt to eliminate the Hizmet movement from the bureaucracy and the judiciary without relying on any legal evidence is a good sign of this.
Operation against the Hizmet movement soon!
The AK Party government sees the corruption probes as a coup launched against it by the Hizmet movement and it has convinced itself that the probes are a defensive move in response to the effort to close prep schools. Already Erdoğan has presented movement supporters as spies and succeeded in dividing the state bureaucracy, families, friends and neighbors in the country. Unfortunately, this polarization in society is quite dangerous.
Grondahl: Turkish community strong in wake of threats from back home
After a three-year hiatus, forced underground by fear of political retaliation from the repressive autocratic Erdogan regime in Turkey, members of the local Turkish community are re-emerging.
Separate state and religion
Turkey needs to face the fact that experience gained over the course of almost a century has shown that the marriage of state and religion is detrimental to both. If Turkey is to ever consolidate a liberal and pluralist kind of democracy, state and religion need to be separated, and freedom for believers and nonbelievers alike has to be secured.
Unaffected by tension, TUSKON promotes Turkish economy
The Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists (TUSKON) has had its share of these provocative media reports. Regarding the recent media reports criticizing TUSKON’s lobbying efforts for Turkish firms abroad, TUSKON President Rıza Nur Meral told Sunday’s Zaman that allegations against TUSKON “do not make sense” and that the confederation has always supported Turkish businessmen who want to branch out into global markets. “We will continue our support [for Turkish entrepreneurs],” Meral added.
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