Turkey Purge

Journalist Turgut Usul who was earlier sacked from the state-run broadcaster TRT has been arrested pending trial on terror charges. Removed from his TRT job with a government’s post-coup decree, Usul was arrested as part of an Ankara-based investigation into the Gulen movement. Usul is accused of membership to the movement, which the government blames […]

Pro-Kurdish Republican Peoples’ Party (HDP) Şırnak deputy Leyla Birlik was sentenced to 1 year and 9 months in prison for insulting Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Wednesday. A Şırnak deputy sentenced Birlik to one and a half year in prison, and increased the punishment by another 3 months on the grounds that the offense was committed in

The Konya Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has issued detention warrants for 70 military personnel of various ranks as part of an ongoing investigation into the Gülen group, the Hürriyet daily reported on Thursday. According to the report, 40 of 70 have been detained in operations in 27 provinces. 58 of 70 are active-duty military personnels while

The mother of Semih Özakça, a primary school teacher who went on a hunger strike after he was fired by government decree in the aftermath of a July 15 coup attempt in Turkey, has been detained. Özakça’s mother, Sultan, was detained along with Beyza, the sister of the fellow educator Nuriye Gülmen, also on hunger

A total of fourteen teachers who were earlier removed from their jobs under the government’s post-coup emergency rule, were detained on Tuesday. The suspects were rounded up over their alleged ties to the Gulen movement as part of an investigation in the central Anatolian province of Konya. The government has already detained more than 140,000 people

The Turkish Telecommunications Authority (BTK) has banned access to four online news portals at the request of an earlier court decision. Access to Mezopotamya news agency (MA) and Özgürlükçü Demokrasi, 1HaberVar and Demokrat Haber news portals were banned. The news sites in question have mainly pro-Kurdish editorial policy. The Turkish government closed down some 180

At least 15 lawyers, and judges and prosecutors who were earlier removed from their offices as part of the government’s post-coup crackdown were detained on Jan 1. State-run Anadolu news agency said Monday that police carried out operations in several provinces and detained 15 suspects sought by the Tokat Public Prosecutor’s Office. The detainees are

M.A., a professor of business ethics who was earlier dismissed from his job at Istanbul’s Yildiz Technical University, has been put in pretrial detention after he attempted to flee Turkey’s post-coup crackdown to Greece. M.A. was detained along with A.C.E. a fellow academic who was purged from the Dokuz Eylul University in Izmir and G.H.,

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım on Sunday strongly criticized people who have condemned a new state of emergency decree that gives immunity to civilians who take part in thwarting coup and terror incidents, saying they’re no different than coup plotters, Cumhuriyet reported. “We have issued a law to protect our heroic citizens who advanced on