Hasan was the luckiest because he was not in Turkey during the coup. He was studying abroad on July 15th and learned the coup through the Internet. He was supposed to go back to Turkey but he decided not to do so because of the news on the immense purging in mostly the government and some private institutions. Few days after the coup he learned that he was dismissed from his position at a state university.
Mr. Kenes says he should have been more outspoken in defense of fellow journalists when the government started targeting its critics more than a decade ago. “Frankly, we did not realize Mr. Erdogan’s real intentions,” said Mr. Kenes, who was convicted last year of insulting the president on Twitter and given a 21-month suspended prison sentence. “When I look at my history, I criticize myself for not showing more sympathy for their cases.”
After a searing summer that has already featured a failed military coup, spectacular terrorist attacks and now a new war across the border in Syria, Turkey’s cultural elite is watching with increased unease as authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rides a wave of nationalism that they fear will be used to brand his critics as enemies of the state.
Immediately after the failed coup, the administration published lists of people that Erdogan claimed had participated in the coup. The lists included people from all professions, and journalists were no exception. Turkey now has the highest number of imprisoned journalists in the world, with three times the number jailed as Iran and China.
With its leafy playing fields and historic buildings on the site of a former British army barracks, the Wilhelmsdtadt School in the Berlin suburb of Spandau could easily be mistaken for a English boarding school.
In the late evening of Friday, July 15, word spread across the world that a coup was under way in Turkey. The president was missing, the military announced it had taken control of the country, and a few hours later, in the early hours Saturday morning, the coup was over.
Turks, who make up the majority of Germany’s immigrant community, claim their schools and mosques are being spied on by Erdogan’s undercover agents to root out supporters of Fethullah Gülen – the man the Turkish president claims is behind July’s bloody military coup.
Briefly detained for taking photos of the street next to the Istanbul’s Gayrettepe Police Station, the journalist Tuğba Tekerek has talked about her detention period, shedding lights on what people, jailed as part of the government’s ever-increasing crackdown on the Gülen Movement, get through behind bars.
Vocal Europe: What sort of link does Alliance for Shared Values have with the movement in general and with Mr Gulen in particular? Alp Aslandogan: Alliance for Shared Values (AFSV) has six regional partner organizations and AFSV serves as a loose umbrella for these organizations. They focus on interfaith and intercultural dialogue, helping new immigrants […]
Turkey’s attempted coup shocked an already tense society. At least 240 people were killed, and the country narrowly averted a disastrous military takeover. The plot was led in part by followers of the Gulen movement, a secretive Muslim sect that runs a global network of schools, charities and businesses and has infiltrated the Turkish state. It is only natural that Turks should be determined to identify and punish the conspirators.
JASON HANNA and TIM HUME Captured military officers raped by police, hundreds of soldiers beaten, some detainees denied food and water and access to lawyers for days. These are the grim conditions that many of the thousands who were arrested in Turkey face in the aftermath of a recent failed coup, witnesses tell Amnesty International. […]
This week, Vice President Joe Biden will travel to Turkey to meet with President Erdogan and Prime Minister Yildirim. This is one of the last opportunities for the Obama Administration to emphasize face-to-face how important it is to honor human rights and rule of law in the wake of the attempted coup of July 15.
Turks who live in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Switzerland and have links to the co-called Gulenist movement say they are frightened amid Turkey’s crackdown on Gulen’s followers, according to media reports. MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Some Turkish people living in Europe who have links to supporters of Fethullah Gulen, accused by Ankara of masterminding the July 15 thwarted coup, have […]