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Turkey's purge continues - Tuesday Aug. 16
[IsraelTimes] Turkish police on Monday raided three major courts in Istanbul in search of more than 170 suspects wanted over last month’s attempted coup, reports said. Police began searches of the city’s main Caglayan court and courts in the districts of Gaziosmanpasa and Bakirkoy with arrest warrants for 173 prosecutors and other judicial staff working there, the Dogan news agency said. It was not clear how many suspects had been detained in the raids. According to official figures, more than 35,000 people have been detained so far in the post-coup crackdown against alleged Gulen supporters, although 11,597 of these have since been released. Convicted Turkish editor steps down after coup [IsraelTimes] The editor-in-chief of Turkey’s top opposition daily Cumhuriyet announced on Monday he was stepping down, saying he no longer had faith in the judiciary to hear an appeal in a controversial secrecy trial after the failed coup. He said he would be passing on the post of editor-in-chief but would remain writing articles as a columnist. An Istanbul court had in May sentenced Can Dundar to five years and 10 months in prison for allegedly revealing state secrets in a story that infuriated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Dundar was allowed to go free pending appeal after the trial and is now believed to be in Germany. But he said he would not surrender to the judiciary as the state of emergency imposed after the coup meant he would not get a fair hearing. He said all the signs indicated a period of “lawlessness” was under way, and that the state of emergency was being used by the government as a pretext to arbitrarily control the judiciary. Dundar, a hugely prominent figure in Turkey and author of several books and documentaries, was appointed Cumhuriyet editor in February 2015 and swiftly made it Turkey’s sharpest opposition daily. Its report on a shipment of arms intercepted at the Syrian border in January 2014 sparked a furor when it was published in May 2015, with Erdogan warning Dundar himself he would “pay a heavy price.” Dundar, together with his Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul, spent three months in pre-trial detention, before being freed on February 26 under a constitutional court ruling. Turkey says failed coup was decades in the making [IsraelTimes] Investigators claim supporters of exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen began infiltrating power structures in the 1980s Turkey summons Swedish envoy over ‘scandalous’ age of consent tweet [IsraelTimes] Stockholm denounces Ankara’s controversial abuse law as ‘allowing sex with children,’ as tensions between Turkey, EU escalate FETÖ-linked publications at schools to be seized, destroyed [Hurriyet] Turkey’s Education Ministry has asked educational institutions throughout the country to collect and destroy any books published by groups linked to the Fethullahist Terror Organization (FETÖ), which has been blamed for the failed July 15 coup, Turkish news website Duvar reported Aug. 14. In an Aug. 9 letter to schools, the ministry listed 29 publishing houses, 15 magazines and 45 dailies which were identified as being linked to FETÖ and banned as part of a decree law passed under the state of emergency that was implemented following the July 15 coup attempt. The letter demanded school administrations confiscate and destroy publications belonging to the sources. Previously, in line with a demand from the Bakırköy Public Prosecutor’s Office, a court ruled that all books, CDs, DVDs and other electronic materials published by Fethullah Gülen, the founder and leader of FETÖ, be seized on the grounds that they constituted “terrorist propaganda.” Turkish chief public prosecutor bound for Syria caught on border [Hurriyet] A chief public prosecutor who illegally attempted to cross into Syria after a detention warrant was issued against him as part of an investigation into the Fethullahist Terror Organization (FETÖ) was detained on the border province of Kilis late on Aug. 14. Erzurum Chief Public Prosecutor Ekrem Beyaztaş was caught after he disobeyed warnings by soldiers to stop on the border of the Afrin border post in the Duruca village. The Kilis Governor’s Office said in a statement that judicial and administrative proceedings against the prosecutor had begun. Turkey’s Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) suspended Beyaztaş from duty after the failed coup attempt of July 15. Meanwhile, two staff colonels who fled after the coup attempt and were reportedly planning to flee to Egypt were caught in the Central Anatolian province of Konya on Aug. 14. The Konya Organized Crime Department determined that Staff Colonels Nebi Gazneli and Müslüm Kaya were hiding in a house in the Selçuklu district after their arrival in the area on Aug. 6. The soldiers were detained in a special forces operation at around 10:30 p.m. while the brother of Gazneli, Ömer Gazneli, who allegedly helped them hide, was also detained in a simultaneous operation at his house. Gazneli reportedly said in his testimony that he conducted discussions to ensure his brother and Kaya could flee to Egypt on Aug. 16. He also confessed that the duo buried their service pistols and bullets in the garden of the house. The two staff colonels reportedly ordered soldiers to raid the Turkish Radio and Television Association (TRT) and open fire on people on Istanbul’s Bosphorus Bridge on the night of the failed coup attempt. The two colonels are expected to be transferred to Istanbul for interrogation. Meanwhile, a lieutenant and two sergeants on duty on İmralı Island, where the leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, has been kept in jail since 1999, were detained by anti-terror police over their suspected links to the U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen as a part of the FETÖ probe in the northwestern province of Bursa. The detained security officials, H.Ü., H.U. and M.S., who were in the gendarmerie unit responsible for security outside the high-security jail, were previously suspended over their suspected links to the Gülenists. They were later detained in their houses in Bursa pending an appearance in court. Posted by: trailing wife 2016-08-16 |
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