Turkey Purge

An arrest warrant was issued on Tuesday for the Cumhuriyet daily’s chief executive officer, Akın Atalay, after he was not found at his residence on Monday during an operation targeting the opposition daily. Atalay was in Germany during the police raid that resulted in the detention of 14 Cumhuriyet columnists and executives. The pro-government Sabah […]

Two government decrees that were issued by the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government on Saturday have attracted widespread criticism for including measures that violate international law and agreements to which Turkey is a party. Saturday’s decrees, which have the force of law, were the latest of dozens of such controversial decrees issued by

Diyarbakır Co-mayors Gülten Kışanak and Fırat Anlı, former pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP) deputy Ayla Akat Ata, who was detained on terrorism charges last week, were arrested on Sunday, DHA reported. The co-mayors were brought to the Diyarbakır Courthouse under tight security on Sunday morning after 5 days of detention. Ata was arrested by the

The press cards of veteran journalists Hasan Cemal and Doğan Akın have been cancelled by the Prime Ministry’s Directorate General of Press and Information amid growing government censorship and restrictions on freedom of the press in the country. Cemal is currently writing critical columns in the T24 news portal while Doğan is the founder and

Turkey’s secularist Cumhuriyet daily Editor-in-Chief Murat Sabuncu and columnist Güray Öz were detained after police raided their residences on early Monday. Police raied Sabuncu and Öz’s houses along with the house of daily’s CEO Akın Atalay and columnist Hikmet Çetinkaya on early monday upon the order of an İstanbul court which issued detention warrants against

Amid widespread concerns over deteriorating freedom of the press in Turkey, Turkey on Monday detained 13 journalists from the secularist and critical Cumhuriyet daily including the paper’s Editor-in-Chief Murat Sabuncu and its editorial consultant Kadri Gürsel following police raids on the journalists’ residences. The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office on Monday issued detention warrants for

Journalists detained as part of an operation against the Cumhuriyet daily will not be able to see their lawyers for five days, according to Turkish media reports on Monday. Detention warrants were issued for 18 journalists from the newspaper, and police began to take them into custody one by one on Monday morning. Thirteen journalists including

Iğdır University Rector Professor İbrahim Hakkı Yılmaz was detained on Sunday evening as part of an investigation into the faith-based Gülen movement. Turkey survived a military coup attempt on July 15 that killed over 240 people and wounded more than a thousand others. Immediately after the putsch, the government along with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan