Today In Crackdown

Bengi Kömürcü and Duygu Ciniviz, two reporters for JINHA, pro-Kurdish news agency that the government closed down under post-coup emergency rule, have been detained in Istanbul. Journalists gathered at Kadıköy ferry port in order to report on a press meeting by some women organizations on Sunday. After a random identification control, police detained Kömürcü and […]

The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has decided to withdraw from parliamentary work following the arrest of nine of its deputies including the party’s co-chairs last Friday. “We have decided to halt our work in the legislature,” HDP spokesperson Ayhan Bilgen said at a news conference following a two-day-long party meeting in Diyarbakır on Sunday.

With many popular social media websites already blocked in the country following the imprisonment of Kurdish politicians, Turkey now considers restricting use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) which have helped internet-savvy citizens to circumvent government-imposed barriers so far. According to T24 news platform, the Turkish telecommunications authority (BTK) moved to block access to VPN services

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 42 people were arrested, while

Nine journalists and executives from the Cumhuriyet daily, including its Editor-in-Chief Murat Sabuncu are arrested by the İstanbul 9th Penal Court of Peace on Saturday. Kadri Gürsel, Musa Kart, Güray Öz, Mustafa Kemal Güngör, Turhan Günay, Bülent Utku, Önder Çelik  and Eser Sevinç are arrested columnists and executives from Cumhuriyet daily in addition to the paper’s

The Ministry of Interior Affairs appointed a trustee to Şırnak municipality on Saturday after the removal of the elected mayor on alleged terror charges. The mayor Serhan Kadırhan had been recently removed as a result of terror investigation and replaced by Şırnak’s deputy governor Turan Bedirhanoğlu. The appointment was made possible by one of the

At least 11 pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputies were detained in a major government crackdown against the opposition on Thursday night. Police raided the homes of HDP Co-chairs Figen Yüksekdağ and Selahattin Demirtaş and HDP deputy Ziya Pir, and took all three into custody. HDP’s official Twitter account in English announced that “At least

Turkish police raided the Ankara home of Figen Yüksekdağ, co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), at midnight on Thursday, according to messages on Twitter posted by her adviser, Sıtkı Güngör A Turkish court had ruled last week for judicial supervision and a travel ban for Figen Yüksekdağ, claiming that she represents a flight

Sakarya Public Prosecutor’s Office issued detention warrants for 36 people who attended local protests against detainment of journalists Ekrem Dumanlı and Hidayet Karaca in 2014, as part of an investigation into the Gülen movement. According to an article Turkish TV channel CnnTurk, police have managed to detain 13 of them so far while the remaining