The new Turkey |
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14-Aug-2019 |
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10 Augist 2019: Court arrests 4 men allegedly abducted by Turkish intelligenceFour out of six men who were allegedly abducted by the Turkish intelligence agency in February and were missing for months were arrested by a court on Friday evening over Gülen links, according to Deutsche Welle Turkish service. Yasin Ugan, Özgür Kaya, Erkan Irmak and Salim Zeybek have been in police custody since July 28. Gökhan Türkmen and Mustafa Yılmaz, who were also abducted in February, are still missing. Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a Turkish deputy and human rights activist, called the court ruling a “scandal,” reporting that the detainees did not even know the names of their attorneys, who according to officials they hired. Lawyers from human rights organizations were removed from the corridors near the courtroom by the police, the DW report stated. Turkey accuses the Gülen movement of orchestrating a 2016 coup attempt, although it strongly denies any involvement. Since 2016 at least 24 Gülen-linked individuals have gone missing. Two of the abducted Gülen followers told Correctiv, a non-profit investigative newsroom in Europe, they had been subjected to torture and ill treatment by intelligence officers at a secret site in Ankara. .------------------------------------------- 2 more men abducted by armed group in broad daylight in AnkaraÖzgür Kaya and Yasin Ugan, both of Ankara, were reportedly abducted from their apartment building on Wednesday, with police saying they have no information on their whereabouts. Exiled journalist Cevheri Güven reported on Bold Medya on Friday that the abductions took place in front of eyewitnesses when a large group of armed men introduced themselves as plainclothes police officers. However, police told the victims’ families that they have no information on the abducted men. The incident took place in Ankara’s Altındağ district on Wednesday. The armed group surrounded the men’s apartment building on 1847th Street in Ankara’s Çamlık neighborhood in the afternoon. Hoods were put on the heads of Kaya and Ugan, and they were taken away in a white van, according to eyewitness accounts. There have been many abduction cases in Turkey since a July 15, 2016 failed coup, targeting supporters of the faith-based Gülen movement. Journalist Güven wrote on Friday that Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) has so far abducted 21 people linked to the movement. According to him, those abductees were tortured at a detention center at the intersection of Anadolu Boulevard and the Marşandiz train station in Ankara. In December Correctiv, a non-profit investigative newsroom in Europe, reported that as part of a massive purge and persecution of the faith-based Gülen movement following a coup attempt on July 15, 2016, Turkey has established secret torture sites inside the country to interrogate followers of the movement. Correctiv, composed of nine international media organizations, interviewed two Gülen movement followers who were abducted and tortured at secret sites and reported that the accounts of the witnesses do not contradict each other. According to Correctiv, the abductions run by Turkey’s MİT both inside Turkey and abroad have already been reported. However, they added, “There are also accounts of another, darker side to the suppression machinery that has remained unreported till now: secret torture sites inside Turkey.” According to data compiled by the Stockholm Center for Freedom (SCF), 21 people have been abducted in Turkey since the controversial coup attempt in July 2016. Mysterious disappearances involving already-victimized opposition groups have become a common occurrence in Turkey in the aftermath of the abortive putsch. (SCF with turkishminute.com)
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“It's all very bizarre but we are pretty certain it was police who did this because at least one of the group was in uniform,” Selda said. “But the police feign ignorance. We don’t know where to turn.” Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu, a lawmaker for the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party and a member of the parliament’s human rights commission, said the Security Directorate in Ankara had not responded to his formal request for information about the men.
Their case mirrors those of several other alleged Gulenists who were forcibly abducted in Ankara in the wake of the coup. Human Rights Watch noted that victims were carted off in vans by plainclothes security officials. Subsequent appeals from family members for their whereabouts fell upon deaf ears. One of the victims, who eventually won asylum in Germany, told Haaretz about his ordeal.
He was held in a tiny cell where he was frequently interrogated. “The floor was dark and covered in soft cloth, as were the walls, apparently so that inmates couldn’t commit suicide bashing their heads against them.” The man, using the pseudonym “Tolga,” said he had been tortured and threatened with rape. “High on the wall were rings for attaching hands to the wall, with lower ones for the feet. There were other torture instruments and clubs.” He was eventually freed after pretending to aquiesce to captors’ demands that he snitch on fellow Gulenists.
Kaya and Ugan may well be freed too, but not thanks to any pressure from Turkey’s largely subdued media or its bleeding heart liberals. Howard Eissenstat, an associate professor of Middle East history at St. Lawrence University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Project on Middle East Democracy, explained this indifference in emailed comments to Al-Monitor: “Most on the Turkish left have been squeamish about defending Gulenists from the start precisely because they agree with the [ruling Justice and Development Party] that the group is a nefarious anti-democratic force and because the Gulen movement played such a profound role in empowering the AKP and honing its repressive tools before 2013.”
These included jailing journalists critical of the secretive Sunni cleric, sabotaging the government’s efforts to make peace with the Kurds and fabricating evidence against military officers in show trials that were dropped once Gulen and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fell out after a protracted power struggle.
Like many others, Kaya and Ugan went into hiding after the coup attempt as the government began rounding up suspected Gulenists by the thousands. Kaya’s home was raided by police three times. In February 2017, Aycan was detained for five days in the Black Sea city of Samsun, where she now lives with her family. “They grilled me about my husband and I kept telling them the truth, that I didn’t know where he was, that I had not heard from him since September 2016.” Selda, who used to teach at a Gulen-affiliated school, has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison for her supposed links to terrorists. She is appealing the verdict.
The purge continues unabated with at least 150,000 people fired from their jobs. A further 160,000 others have been detained, including lawyers, academics, journalists and businessmen. The bulk are accused of ties to Gulen or rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party. As many as 60,000 remain behind bars on a raft of flimsy terror charges.
In the meantime, MIT has carried its campaign against the so-called “Fethullah Gulen Terror Organization” overseas, with forced renditions of teachers and others from the Gambia to Kosovo, often with the blessings of local authorities.
Eissenstat noted, “The AKP leadership really does see the Gulenist movement as fundamentally centralized and the core of internal resistance to its rule.” Moreover, he said, “The AKP is and will continue to be for the foreseeable future a revolutionary state: Purges are not secondary to this process, they are intrinsic to it.”
The Gulenist label has become a catchall for perceived mischief including the government’s own, as Merve Demirel, a 23-year-old university student, discovered last week. Demirel was detained in Ankara for taking part in a protest of prison conditions. Images of a police officer groping Demirel as she was being shoved into a police van went viral on Twitter. Authorities sought to justify her detention on the grounds that her father was a Gulenist. Demirel denied the claims and has filed a criminal complaint against her molester.
Amberin Zaman is a senior correspondent reporting from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe exclusively for Al-Monitor. Zaman has been a columnist for Al-Monitor for the past five years, examining the politics of Turkey, Iraq and Syria and writing the daily Briefly Turkey newsletter. Prior to Al-Monitor, Zaman covered Turkey, the Kurds and conflicts in the region for The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph, The Los Angeles Times and the Voice of America. She served as The Economist's Turkey correspondent between 1999 and 2016, and has worked as a columnist for several Turkish language outlets. On Twitter: @amberinzaman
* Source: https://stockholmcf.org/enforced-disappearences-in-turkey-2/