Today In Crackdown

A tea house in Turkey’s eastern province of Erzurum was banned due to Kurdish-language songs played in the café, according to media. Mezopotamya news agency reported Tuesday that a tea house in Erzurum’s Karaçoban district was raided by police and military officers and later shuttered for 10 days effective immediately. The reason for the closure […]

An indictment filed by the Istanbul police’s cyber-crimes department seeks up to 4 years in prison for the New York Knicks center Enes Kanter for alleged insulting Hidayet Turkoglu. Pro-government Sabah newspaper said Wednesday that the indictment accuses Kanter of insulting Turkoglu several times via social media. The NBAer faces between 1 to 4 years

Journalist Mete Cem Bahtiyar was arrested pending trial over terror charges, according to Ozguruz online news portal. Detained following a police raid at his home in Balikesir’s Bandirma district, Bahtiyar was put in pretrial detention on Jan 31, Ozguruz said Wednesday. Police seized his computer, cellphone, and books including one by Noam Chomsky. Bahtiyar is

Adana police seized copies of several magazines and books published by the faith-based, government-critic Furkan foundation. Police stopped a suspected car in Seyhan district to find several books, magazines and electronic devices allegedly belonging to Furkan foundation, which was closed by the government last week. While the driver, identified as Cemal K., was detained, police

The Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) stripped pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP) Şırnak deputy Ferhat Encü of his parliamentary status on Tuesday. TMMB’s decision came in the wake of Encü’s prison sentence was upheld by an appeal court. Encu has been recently convicted of making propaganda on behalf of a terrorist organization and sentenced

Ayşe Gökkan, a Turkish activist and a member of Free Women Movement (TJA), has been detained by Turkish police in the Nusaybin district of Mardin province, the sendika.org news portal reported on Monday. According to the report, Gökkan was taken into custody in Nusaybin’s Abdulkadir Paşa neighbourhood due to an outstanding detention warrant and was taken

Kıvılcım Arat, a Turkish LGBT activist, is entering the third day of a hunger strike to expose human rights violations committed against Diren Coşkun, a transgender woman who has been held in pre-trial detention in Tekirdağ prison. According to the T24 news portal, Coşkun launched a hunger strike after she was denied surgery by the

Forty-six more military members have been detained in the last 24 hours over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, as part of investigations launched by the Kastamonu, Adıyaman and Merzifon chief public prosecutor’s offices, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported. The Gülen movement is accused by the Turkish government of mounting a coup attempt

Women wanted for their alleged ties to the Gulen movement are now accused of getting pregnant to ditch arrest, according to state-run Anadolu news agency. A 25-page indictment prepared by the Istanbul Public Prosecutor’s Office as part of an investigation into the movement’s alleged network of lawyers claimed that women suspected of Gulen ties across

Three people were detained in Turkey’s border province of Edirne while they were on their way to escape to the Greece on Feb 2, state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Monday. Anadolu said gendarmerie stopped a bus near the Üyüklütatar village in Edirne and rounded up the suspects who were facing outstanding arrest warrants over