Turkish court orders 81-year-old man to stay behind bars on coup charges
Date posted: November 3, 2017
A Turkish court has ruled for a continuation of the arrest of an 81-year-old Turkish man with walking and speaking difficulties, several Turkish media outlets reported.
The man, named Mustafa Türk, was initialy detained by Turkish police on Sept. 1, 2016, over suspected links to the Gülen group, which the Turkish government accuses of masterminding a July 15 coup attempt.
He was handcuffed and taken by police from his house in Turgutlu, Manisa province, handcuffed and driven to a police station for interrogation. His relatives described it as “degrading and barbaric” treatment. Several days later, he was officially arrested and sent to a prison in Manisa.
Last weekend, the Manisa High Criminal Court reportedly decided for the continuation of his pretrial detention.
When tanks blocked bridges in the heart of Istanbul and F-16s bombed Turkey’s parliament in Ankara on July 15, Western diplomats were caught by surprise. So too were U.S. forces stationed at the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey. The U.S. intelligence community had not an inkling that anything was amiss until the troops started moving.
Post-Kemalist Turkey and the Gülen Movement
The Gülen Movement was known for the cool-headed decisions it took at the risk of severe criticism during Turkey’s most difficult times. Today, it would be expected that the same movement will display a similar rationality in a changing Turkey.
Politics and communities
The state can no longer control the estate in its entirety. As a matter of fact, society and politics cannot be perceived as an “estate.” Thus, civil forces and communities want to be influential over decision-making mechanisms related to political processes and public polices, not over the state.
Turkey: A climate of fear; losers in the aftermath of the coup attempt
Turkey at large will lose as Erdoğan chooses the retaliatory path and purges relentlessly, splitting the country into supporters and adversaries. A climate of fear and indignation will envelop not only the many institutions that were hit hard, but Turkey in general, and the Middle East will suffer even further than it is already suffering.
Why Turkey wants to silence its academics
Where will Turkey go from here? I spend many sleepless nights, feeling just as I did when I first read George Orwell’s “1984.” Just like Orwell’s dystopian society – a society with oppressive controls – the current Turkish state and the government are, it seems, out to silence all people capable of producing new and independent thinking and research in Turkey. As most of such minds are concentrated in Turkish academia, they will all be destroyed unless they turn into obedient and pious consumers.
Gülen’s lawyer condemns Erdoğan’s accusations, TÜSİAD calls for sanity in country
Prominent Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen’s lawyer, Nurullah Albayrak, condemned Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s latest comments about Gülen.
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