Cemil Barlas, a staunch supporter of Tayyip Erdoğan and commentator for the pro-government A Haber TV, said during a program that followers of the Gülen movement, which the government accuses of being behind a failed coup on July 15, must be kept in detention camps and should be given food tickets.
According to data from the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, there has been a rapid rise in the number of Turkish people seeking asylum in Germany since a failed coup attempt on July 15. Germany received asylum applications from a total of 5,166 Turkish citizens during the January-November period of 2016, according to a story in Deutsche Welle on Sunday.
“Even if you get more civilian control, it’s not more democratic,” Lars Haugom, a Norwegian expert on Turkish army, said. “It seems to be about party control, with [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan and the AKP seeking to strengthen their control of the military.” Ceren, a general’s daughter, fears there’s little left to stop the authoritarian Erdogan now. “No one can say no to him,” she said. “This is his kingdom now.”
Western officials have preferred to raise concerns over the steady dismantling of Turkey’s free institutions only privately with their counterparts in Ankara. This approach has failed. That failure has left many millions of pro-democracy Turks to fend for themselves, while a once-fringe ideological element in the AKP, reared on Islamist supremacism, has been emboldened.
Turkey’s Erdogan regime has arrested an American pastor whom they could use in a possible exchange for the Turkish Muslim cleric they want to extradite from the United States. The Muslim Fethullah Gülen is accused by the Erdogan regime to be the mastermind behind the latest failed-military-coup intending to depose the president.
The Alliance for Shared Values of the US & The Dialogue Platform of the UK have prepared a report on “UK’s relations with Turkey” that focuses on the Hizmet Movement. The report may be downloaded, disseminated for free and even printed. Representatives from these organizations were personally invited to submit written evidence by the Committee to explain Hizmet and provide Hizmet’s response to the AKP government’s allegations against Fethullah Gülen and the Hizmet movement.
Amnesty South Asia Director Champa Patel: “With 24 million Pakistani children out of school, Pakistan’s decision to expel teachers from the Pak-Turk International Schools and Colleges will only hurt Pakistan’s children. What the country needs is more classrooms and more teachers, not a politically-motivated decision to purge educators at the behest of the Turkish government.”
In yet another example of human tragedies proliferated in the aftermath of the July 15 coup attempt, a Sinop woman lost her twins in jail after she was arrested due to the ByLock mobile application that she says has never downloaded.
What is the sense in advocating for the transfer of investments of private individuals to a government backed NGO? Is President Erdogan indirectly telling African leaders that his empire in Turkey extends to African countries hence the outrageous demand? From the preceding, it is clear that President Erdogan has little or no respect for African nations hence this anomaly. I also beg to state here that the politics of Turkey should be left in Turkey.
If the executive branch were to interfere too forcefully in the Gülen extradition case now, it would only confirm Turkish leaders’ belief that the U.S. system operates on the same corrupt terms as Turkey’s. This would fundamentally affirm Erdoğan’s view that democracy as a value and a practice is a purely cynical discourse used by Western powers to harm Turkey.
According to an official narrative of the government, MIT learned the coup plans earlier in the day and its chief several times discussed it with army chief Akar. One fundamental contradiction was the fact that despite this early warning and intelligence, commanders of navy, ground forces and air forces attended a wedding ceremony that night.
The UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee is examining the bilateral relationship between the UK and Turkey, focusing on rights and freedoms as well as how Turkish foreign and security policies relate to those of the UK. The inquiry is ongoing.