An Afghan-Turk Boys High School was raided by the Afghan security forces under the command of Uzbek leader Abdul Rashid Dostum, controversial First Vice President of Afghanistan, early Saturday morning and detained Turkish teachers, dozens of students and their parents in order to seize the school at the request of Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan.
A Turkish teacher, who was allegedly kidnapped in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar and taken to the city’s airport, has been released after authorities temporarily grounded an airplane, according to local media and a social media posting by the man.
After the alleged military coup that failed, the Islamic-rooted government forced hundreds of thousands of faith-based community members out of Turkey, causing a massive diaspora of Turkish citizens (deprived, however, of their citizenship) around the world.
The failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016 in Turkey and the infamous Reichstag fire in Germany in 1933 had many similarities, with both allowing the leaders of those countries to amass more power to oppress their opposition, journalist Can Dündar said in his commentary for German Radio Cosmo on Thursday.
A woman and her three children went missing after a boat carrying several Turkish asylum seekers who fled Turkey due to an ongoing government crackdown on followers of the Gülen movement capsized in the Evros River along the Turkey-Greece border on Wednesday night, Euronews Turkish reported.
In remarks that fueled suspicions even further that the Turkish government was involved in a failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım said on Thursday that July 15 was a “project” he did not like or approve of.
Eighty-six-year-old businessman Celal Afşar was arrested on Thursday along with his daughter, son-in-law and two others in Niğde province as part of an investigation into the faith-based Gülen movement, the tr724 news website reported.
“Our decision to come to Greece developed very suddenly. I did not want to leave my country that I loved so much. Especially it gives different meaning if you have your parents and relatives still live there. It was very difficult to leave the country, but the persecution was also accelerated on the one hand. Every day, we read news about tortures under custody and prisons on the media…
Erdogan’s aggressive policies, which have driven many Turks into exile, seem to have had an unintentional side-effect. “A bridge is being built between Turks and Greeks,” the English teacher says. “We’re learning to overcome prejudices and historical misunderstandings.”