Thousands of women, many with small children to take care of, were jailed in Turkey in an unprecedented crackdown and subjected to torture and ill-treatment in detention centers and prisons as part of the government’s systematic campaign of intimidation and persecution of critics and opponents.
Turkey, under the autocratic rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has stepped up its witch hunt against the alleged members of Gülen movement abroad, pro-Erdoğan English paper Daily Sabah reported. So far, 16 alleged Gülen followers have been abducted or caught abroad and transferred to Turkey from Asian, Middle Eastern countries and Bulgaria.
Denizli-based teacher Raşit Uzantı has been arrested days after he was dismissed from his profession along with her wife who used to work at a state hospital in Denizli. Raşit was recovering only recently from the repercussions of a brain surgery he underwent a while ago.
Prosecutor Kuriş was detained over allegations over involvement into coup attempt despite he was in rest at home because of his serious sickness, cancer. However, the biased forensic medicine department has always issued reports claiming that Prosecutor Kuriş is eligible to stay in prison conditions.
Hacer Çakmak is only one of the hundreds of thousands of people who found themselves facing tremendous difficulties after the government started a desperate crackdown on the Gülen movement in the aftermath of a July 15 coup attempt.
As Turkey celebrated the 97th anniversary of the foundation of the Turkish Parliament and Children’s Day on April 23, at least 520 children with imprisoned mothers have been deprived of enjoying the day as they are obliged to grow up in jail.
The bizarre, phantom-like failed coup d’etat staged against Erdoğan’s increasingly brutal regime on July 15 last year saw him seize the opportunity to exterminate, imprison and purge tens of thousands of his enemies, real and imagined, within all strata of civil society, the military, government, media, education, health, the judiciary and other institutions.
Erdogan’s Islamist supporters sometimes suggest that he is on his way to declaring himself caliph. As the 100th anniversary of the caliphate’s abolition approaches, he may find this tempting; depending on whether he uses the Islamic or Christian calendar, that could happen, respectively, on March 10, 2021 or March 4, 2024. You read it here first.