Under arrest for months, 62-year-old teacher dies of cancer in prison
Date posted: June 8, 2017
Arrested for raising donations on behalf of a Gülen movement-linked charity, 62-year-old religion and ethics teacher Hüseyin Pembe passed away after his battle with cancer in prison on June 1.
With the starting date for his imprisonment still unknown, Pembe has been under arrest in Samsun prison for at least four months.
According to Turkish media and several social media accounts, Pembe was diagnosed with cancer while he was under arrest over Gulen links. After a surgery at a hospital, he was reportedly sent back to the prison where his medical condition got worse under poor conditions and he passed away.
Pembe’s body was buried in his hometown in Kayseri province and his sister, also under arrest, was able to attend the ceremony only with gendarmeries in company, media reported.
Turkish government accuses the movement of masterminding the July 15, 2016 coup attempt and it has detained more than 120,000 people in its crackdown against the group so far.
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Helton Silva Malambane, a software developer from Mozambique who previously worked with the now-shut-down Fatih University, was detained by police at his residence in İstanbul over links to the Gülen movement, whose sympathizers the government accuses of masterminding a failed coup attempt on July 15. Twenty-seven-year-old Malambane was detained after police received anonymous tips about him.
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Lawyers for Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen have said via Twitter that Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ should have provided proof to back up his statement that Gülen planned to return from the US to Turkey in a similar way to Iran’s revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
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Vural said that if the government does not protect its citizens who are involved in the Turkish schools — which are affiliated with the Hizmet movement, inspired by the teachings of US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen — but instead complains about them to international governments, questions need to be asked.
Turkey’s purges are hitting its business class
It is not clear when the government will begin auctioning off seized firms. The risk is that the economy may gradually come to resemble Russia’s, where political loyalty is the price for keeping a slice of the pie. “It is like watching a piece of snow roll down a mountain,” says a veteran civil servant ousted in one of the purges. “You think it won’t hit you, until you realise it’s becoming an avalanche.”
Is the Hizmet movement resisting normalization?
Accusing the Hizmet movement, which insistently demands the fulfillment of the steps towards democratization which I referred to above and contributes to the process of change as evidenced by its stance in the referendum, of serving as a parallel structure indirectly means: “I will not change myself and introduce universal reforms. You have to live with this painful fact for the normalization of the country and take your steps accordingly.”
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