UN to Turkey: Free and Compensate Gulen-linked Detainees


Date posted: May 30, 2019

Turkey must release two men detained over suspected links to a cleric blamed for a 2016 coup attempt and pay them compensation for arbitrary detention, a UN body said on Wednesday.

Academic Ismet Ozcelik and school principal Turgay Karaman were deported in 2017 from Malaysia to Turkey, where they were accused of ties to the network of Fethullah Gulen, a cleric who Ankara says sought an uprising the previous year.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has jailed more than 77,000 people pending trial since the 2016 coup attempt and widespread arrests are still routine in a crackdown critics say demonstrates growing autocracy in Turkey.

U.S.-based Gulen and his followers deny coup-plotting.

Saying it had violated the two Turkish men’s freedoms, the UN Human Rights Committee gave Turkish authorities 180 days to comply with its ruling. But it lacks any enforcement authority.

“The State party is obligated … to release the authors (of the complaint) and provide them with adequate compensation for the violations suffered,” the committee’s report on the case said, noting that Turkey’s membership of an international rights covenant required it to act and provide “effective remedy”.

Turkey had sought an exemption due to its state of emergency and the “serious and complex” nature of the pair’s alleged crimes, but the committee rejected that, saying it failed to explain how they posed a threat.

There was no immediate reaction from Ankara to the report.

Since the failed coup attempt three years ago, Turkish authorities have demanded the extradition of various people suspected of links to Gulen’s network.

While some countries, including Kosovo and Pakistan as well as Malaysia, have complied, others have refused.

Last year, six Turkish nationals were arrested and deported from Kosovo at Ankara’s request, in a move that led to Kosovo’s prime minister sacking his interior ministry.

In Pakistan, authorities deported a former director of a chain of private Turkish schools and his family to Turkey over alleged Gulen links in 2017.

Ozcelik and Karaman had lived in Malaysia for 13 years before their deportation. The UN committee said Karaman was the head of Time International School, an institution inspired by Gulen’s teachings.

His Hizmet movement runs some 2,000 educational establishments worldwide. Gulen has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennyslvania since 1999.

Source: Haaretz , May 29, 2019


Related News

13 criteria Erdogan regime uses to determine Gulen supporters are terrorists

Dr. Ismail Sezgin of the Centre for Hizmet Studies in the UK highlights the 13 criteria, based on Turkish PM Binali Yildirim’s statement, to identify Gulen supporters, who the regime considers terrorists. The arrests and purge in Turkey are made according to these criteria. Dr. Sezgin explains that these are nothing to with coup-plotting or terrorism. With these criteria the government of Turkey can anyone and this is what has been happening in Turkey.

Indonesian-Turkish Schools host 5th Science Olympiads

Turkish schools in Indonesia hosted the 5th Annual Indonesia Science Project Olympiads (ISPO) on February 26-28.ISPO is comprised of 6 different subject categories, namely biology, chemistry, environment, technology and computer. A total of 935 project entries were submitted to qualify for top 150. The projects attracted a great deal attention of the visitors. The finalists […]

Turkey Carries Out Major NATO Purge

Turkey has fired hundreds of senior military staff serving at NATO in Europe and the United States following July’s coup attempt, documents show, broadening a purge to include some of the armed forces’ best-trained officials.

Sacrificing a legend for a shoebox*

Just to prevent the graft probe…They [AK Party] declined the honor of ending the military tutelage system and also declared the procedures used to achieve this triumph to be “unlawful.” Since they sacrificed the most important victory of their eleven-year rule, we can easily say the following: My friends, this must be one hell of a shoebox!

In Turkey, The Man To Blame For Most Everything(!) Is A U.S.-Based Cleric

It isn’t just last month’s attempted coup that the Gulen movement is being blamed for! Everything from suicide bomb attacks to past mine disasters are being laid at the cleric’s doorstep. Just to name a few: last November’s Turkish shootdown of a Russian fighter jet, an explosion at a coal mine in Soma led to an underground fire that killed 301 people in 2014, a horrific suicide bombing at a wedding in Gaziantep killed dozens in August and even killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007.

34 housewives arrested over Gülen links in İstanbul

Thirty-four housewives were arrested by a Turkish court on Saturday due to alleged use of a smart phone application called ByLock and links to the Gülen movement, which the Turkish government blames for a failed coup last July.

Latest News

Fethullah Gulen – man of education, peace and dialogue – passes away

Fethullah Gülen’s Condolence Message for South African Human Rights Defender Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Hizmet Movement Declares Core Values with Unified Voice

Ankara systematically tortures supporters of Gülen movement, Kurds, Turkey Tribunal rapporteurs say

Erdogan possessed by Pharaoh, Herod, Hitler spirits?

Devious Use of International Organizations to Persecute Dissidents Abroad: The Erdogan Case

A “Controlled Coup”: Erdogan’s Contribution to the Autocrats’ Playbook

Why is Turkey’s Erdogan persecuting the Gulen movement?

Purge-victim man sent back to prison over Gulen links despite stage 4 cancer diagnosis

In Case You Missed It

Hatred-inciting discourses and the debate on ‘genocide and crime against humanity’

Turkish parents worried about gov’t plan to shut down study centers

Gülen says never considered establishing political party

Turkey’s Witch-Hunt Against the Gülen Movement Should Stop

Turkey Carries Out Major NATO Purge

Journalists and Writers Foundation gathers all colors of Turkey at iftar

Government carried out a “controlled” coup in an attempt to exploit its outcomes: Opposition leader

Copyright 2025 Hizmet News