
“Today is the highest Islamic holiday,” said Ismail Akbulut for the Multicultural Mosaic Foundation. “We are commemorating the story of Prophet Abraham when he was going to sacrifice his oldest son. Today we are getting together as cousins and celebrating this festival,” Akbulut added. “We have a future in this country together.”

Asylum seekers are still fleeing Turkey for Canada and other western countries, Kaplan said. “There’s at least 14 families (in my neighbourhood in Ottawa). I mean ladies (with kids). All their husbands have been arrested (in Turkey,)” he said. The women are not comfortable speaking out publicly for fear it could imperil their husbands behind bars in Turkey, he added.

Hanife Çiftçi, who was jailed in June when she was seven weeks pregnant due to her alleged links to the Gülen movement, lost her unborn baby and was sent back to prison from the hospital on the same day, the tr724 news website reported on Wednesday.

The Justice Ministry of Bosnia and Herzegovina has put an end to Turkey’s persistent efforts to have a journalist living exile extradited to Turkey on trumped-up terrorism charges, setting a strong precedent for other Turkish citizens resident in Bosnia who are being harassed and threatened with prosecution in Turkey.

Huseyin Sahnaz is seriously worried about his wife and infant child. After all, prisons are not exactly family-friendly institutions. Both have to share a cell with 30 other inmates. And temperatures during this time of year tend to reach 30 degrees Celsius (around 90 Fahrenheit) or higher.

“Erdoğan’s regime is increasingly using connections with domestic-based U.S. Islamist groups, like Muslim American Society (MAS), Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) to exert political influence in the United States,” Anne-Christine Hoff, Dallas associate of the activist group Counter Islamist Grid, said in American Thinker on Sunday.