Filiz Y., a 30-year-old woman who gave birth at Mersin City Hospital last night, has been detained over alleged links to the Gulen movement, which the Turkish government accuses of masterminding a coup attempt on July 15, 2016.
A 12-year-old child has died of brain cancer several months after Turkish border agents seized his and his parents’ passports at İstanbul Atatürk Airport, causing the family to abandon their plans to receive cancer treatment in Cuba.
Prof. Hayrettin Karaman, Erdogan’s close friend and religious counsel, and AKP’s main Islamist theologian, has issued a fatwa that legitimizes certain crimes during a civil war. He said, “soldiers who commit ordinary crimes during a wartime shall not be punished.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has added new insults to his rich collection of hate speeches and defamation targeting Gülen movement on Wednesday and said that “Gülen movement members lost their way, and only follow orders from their owner Fethullah Gülen.”
It is not clear when the government will begin auctioning off seized firms. The risk is that the economy may gradually come to resemble Russia’s, where political loyalty is the price for keeping a slice of the pie. “It is like watching a piece of snow roll down a mountain,” says a veteran civil servant ousted in one of the purges. “You think it won’t hit you, until you realise it’s becoming an avalanche.”
The Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) head İlhan Yerlikaya has sent a letter to his Albanian counterpart to restrict a documentary titled “Love is a Verb,” saying that the film was broadcasted to make propaganda on behalf of the Gülen movement.
To consolidate his reign, Turkey’s president Mr. Erdogan intimidated his political opponents, emasculated the military, silenced the press, and enfeebled the judiciary; most recently, he pressed the parliament to amend the constitution to grant him essentially absolute powers.
Turkish president’s chief religious counsel Hayrettin Karaman, professor of Islamic law, has given approval to overlook torture and other crimes committed by members of security services, saying that Turkey is at total mobilization and under attack from within and outside.
NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, General Curtis Scaparrotti, said in December that he never had any reason to suspect that Turkish officers in his teams would be involved in a coup attempt. In their absence, and without their expertise, the capacity of his staff had been “degraded,” he told the Financial Times and Deutsche Welle.
Followers of this liberal U.S.-based cleric, Gulen, were scapegoated for the July 2016 coup. Tens of thousands of police officers and security officials were fired and even arrested, simply for being followers of Gulen, an opponent of ISIS. The Turkish President seems willing to blame everyone but ISIS, or even offer much of an anti-ISIS campaign.