Turkey Purge

A total of fifteen people, including police officers, teachers and school principles were arrested by a Turkish court on Wednesday in an investigation targeting the Gülen movement, which the Turkish government blames for a failed coup last July. According to the report, police detained 28 people early on Wednesday in simultaneous raids across Antalya province. […]

Turkey has suffered a dramatic decline in freedoms in the last decade according to a report by Freedom House in which it presented the second highest decline in the world along with the African nation of Gambia. According to a new ranking by Freedom House that was published on Tuesday in its “Freedom in the

Staff Maj. Bilgehan Bülbül, the commander of the largest transport fleet of the Air Force Command in Ankara and the first female fleet commander, has recently been detained over alleged involvement in a coup attempt on July 15, The Haberdar daily reported on Wednesday. Bülbül, who was expected to become the first female general, and

A huge cleansing of Turkey’s state and other institutions is continuing as people from all walks of life find themselves being hunted down and taken into custody. At least 652 people were put in prison, while 1,325 others were detained over the past 10 days, according to Turkish news agencies. Police carried out the operations

Detained for two times over the past week as part of the government crackdown against Turkey’s Kurdish political movement, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) spokesperson and Kars deputy Ayhan Bilgen was arrested on Tuesday. Bilgen is accused of membership to a terrorist organization. His arrest brought the total number of HDP deputies under custody

A total of 625 people were detained, with 42 of them put under arrest, in operations targeting the Gülen movement over the past week, according to a statement from Turkey’s Interior Ministry on Monday. The detentions and arrests took place between Jan. 23 and 30. In operations targeting the Islamic State in Iraq and the

83-year-old Hacı İsa Sezek is being kept in the same holding cell with his 29-year-old grandchild as Turkey exploits ambiguous terror laws to imprison critics, according to Duvar news portal. Sezek was arrested on charges of “membership in an armed organization,” after spending 25 days under custody, on Jan. 4. The elderly arrestee shares the

Mersin police, on Monday, detained 18 suspects as part of an investigation into the Gülen movement, which the government accuses of masterminding a coup attempt on July 15, 2016. While fourteen were accused of giving financial support to the movement, the remaining 4 is accused of using ByLock mobile application, which Turkish prosecutors claim to

A Turkish court on Monday released a housewife, a mother of five whose children were abandoned in a parking lot after her detention, on TL 50,000 bail. Local journalist Gökhan Özbek reported the release of the woman, named Nagehan, who had been arrested on charges of terrorism after a visit to her husband, currently jailed

The provincial governor Cemil Sarıoğlu was appointed as a trustee to replace Burhan Kocaman, the mayor of Elazığ’s Karakoçan district who was elected on the ticket of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Regions Party (DBP). Turkey has stepped up political pressure on Kurdish politicians in recent months while the gov’t appointed trustees to the management of 64 municipalities,