
One of the Trump administration’s first decisions about the fight against the Islamic State, ISIS, was made by Michael Flynn weeks before he was fired – and it conformed to the wishes of Turkey, whose interests, unbeknownst to anyone in Washington, he’d been paid more than $500,000 to represent.

An Ankara court sent to jail 4 out of 16 Turkish nationals who were deported back to home from Saudi Arabia as part of Turkey’s ever-growing crackdown against the Gülen movement that that has spread to overseas in the recent past.

The families of several Turkish police officers, rounded up as part of the crackdown on the Gulen community, have sought help from human rights activists in a rare example of willingness to speak out on torture allegations that have been rife since the coup attempt last year.

“As the coup attempt unfolded, I fiercely denounced it and denied any involvement,” wrote Gulen, who has been living in self-exile in the US since 1999. “Furthermore, I said that anyone who participated in the putsch betrayed my ideals. Nevertheless, and without evidence, Erdogan immediately accused me of orchestrating it from 5,000 miles away.

A mother of three in the western province of Izmir, Fadime Danışman was arrested along with her 8-month-old baby after police failed to locate her husband, a teacher by profession, as part of an investigation into the Gülen movement.

The exiled cleric accused by Turkey of orchestrating last year’s attempted coup charged President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with seeking to silence critics, as the Turkish leader prepared to push for the preacher’s extradition in a White House meeting with Donald Trump.

Stockholm Centre of Freedom (SCF) has called on the Malaysian government to halt its dirty bidding on behalf of the growingly repressive Turkish government led by President Recep Erdogan, following the arrest and deportation of three Turkish nationals from Kuala Lumpur.

Aysun Aydemir, an English teacher who gave birth to a baby in an elective caesarean procedure, was detained at the hospital and subsequently arrested by a court and put in pretrial detention with a 3-day-old baby in Zonguldak province as part of a witch-hunt targeting the Gülen movement.

Turkey has adopted a new thuggish tactic in persecuting its critics and opponents abroad by orchestrating abductions, enforced disappearance and extrajudicial renditions in addition to profiling and harassment of Turkish expatriates by government institutions and clandestine groups, a report released by Stockholm Center for Freedom (SCF) has revealed.

Amid assassination concerns following the suspicious deaths of two people who allegedly fell from the balcony of their homes, a pro-Erdoğan Twitter troll named Ahmet Üstün (@ustunn_ahmet) on Friday called on the government to assassinate Gülen movement sympathizers in the country and abroad.

In the aftermath of the failed coup — and the subsequent purge of thousands of workers accused of being dissidents — Canada has seen a spike in asylum claims from Turkey. The 55,000-strong Turkish-Canadian community has also become increasingly polarized, with distrust and accusations of witch hunts against anyone deemed to be a sympathizer and supporter of the Gulen Movement.