Turkey Purge

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 over their alleged or real links to the Gülen movement, which the government accuses of masterminding the July 15 coup attempt. At least 27 people were arrested, while

Davut Hancı, a Calgary-based Canadian-Turkish imam who was detained in July over links to Turkey’s failed coup attempt on July 15, was granted a lawyer after nearly three months in solitary confinement in a Turkish prison. Calling the allegations against Hancı ‘ridiculous’, family members of the imam said that Turkish authorities granted him access to

Cumali Atilla, governor of Ankara’s Etimesgut district, has been appointed as a trustee to the Diyarbakır Municipality, whose co-mayors were arrested on terrorism charges on Sunday, the Doğan news agency reported on Tuesday. The agency said earlier in the day that a deputy governor or a district governor would be appointed to the municipality as

Co-mayor of the Çaldıran district in eastern Van province Suna Atabay was detained on Tuesday on charges of allegedly spreading terrorist propaganda. The detention warrant for Atabay was issued two weeks ago, but she was not found at her residence. The police detained the co-mayor accused of aiding the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and

Twenty-one people working for the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK), the Turkish state agency for monitoring, regulating and sanctioning radio and television broadcasts, have been detained over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement. The RTÜK employees, who were earlier suspended from their posts due to their alleged links to the movement, were detained

Protests of any kind face direct intervention from either private security guards or official law enforcement authorities all across the country. Security officials attacked a group of students at the canteen of Anadolu University’s Faculty of Communication Sciences in Eskişehir province while the latter were protesting the government crackdown on Turkey’s leading secular newspaper, Cumhuriyet,

Sixteen staff members of the Kayseri-based Abdullah Gül University, which bears the name of Turkey’s former president, have been detained on the grounds that they use a smart phone application known as ByLock. The 16 people, including research assistants, civil servants and academics, were detained on Tuesday morning as part of an investigation conducted by

Representatives of 45 NGOs and trade bodies gathered to make a press meeting about the post-coup emergency rule in a well-known reception hall in Turkey’s Diyarbakır province but failed to draw attention of journalists, on Tuesday. “Now, we are struggling to make our voice heard only by social media,” a spokesperson representing the signatory NGOs