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Turkish anchorwoman faces 5 years in jail for tweet

January 17, 2015 By administrator

n_77077_1Sedef Kabaş faces up to five years in prison.

Prosecutors seek up to five years of imprisonment for Turkish journalist and anchorwoman Sedef Kabaş for her tweet in which she called on citizens not to forget the name of the judge who dropped the Dec. 17, 2013 corruption probe that involved high-profile names and former Cabinet members.

An indictment has been prepared by the prosecutors on charges of  “targeting people involved in the fight against terrorism and making threats,” which is punishable with jail time from one-and-a-half years to five years.

“Do not forget the name of the judge who decided not to pursue the proceedings in the Dec. 17 probe,” Kabaş tweeted. She was referring to a massive graft probe which was officially dropped on Dec. 16 when the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office rejected an objection to its decision to not pursue proceedings in the case.

Kabaş was detained on Dec. 30 at her house and was released after testifying before a prosecutor.

“I believe in the rule of law. I believe there still people who have faith in rule of law,” Kabaş said then, adding that her tablet, computer, and mobile phone were also seized by the police from her house.

January/17/2015

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: anchorwoman, jail, Turkish, tweet

Davutoğlu: his government will deliver a Turkish flag, Quran & dictionary to each and every home in Macedonia

December 30, 2014 By administrator

Turkey, caliphate and Erdoğan by: ABDULLAH BOZKURT

The narrative, behavior pattern and policy decisions of Turkey’s chief political Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suggests that he believes the caliphate can be resurrected, with himself as the sole contender to become caliph, thereby gaining autonomous political authority over at least part of the Islamic world.

For this grand ambition, Erdoğan has built a personality cult to reflect his image in the government and many political lackeys just parrot what he says or take their cues from Erdoğan’s speeches. Sensing “Master” Erdoğan’s (the name people around him call him) expectations on this matter, his protégée and caretaker Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu publicly announced in Skopje last week that his government will deliver a Turkish flag, Quran and Turkish dictionary to each and every home in Macedonia. Speaking at a political convention in his hometown Konya a few days later, Davutoğlu joyfully reaffirmed this utterly interventionist policy that is sure to raise eyebrows in many capitals in the Balkans.

As the political Islamist government finds it increasingly difficult to manage its affairs amid a deepening crisis of governance in Turkey, the suspension of the rule of law and gross violation of rights and liberties, we’ll likely see more religiously toned rhetoric and policy actions that are motivated by ideological considerations. Davutoğlu’s holding hands with Hamas leader Khalid Mashaal — who showed up in a surprise visit to Turkey — at a political rally is another indication that sensitive issues that draw the attention of pious Muslims, such as Palestinians, will be played out loudly in the coming months.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Davutoglu, deliver, dictionary, flag, Macedonia, Quran, Turkish

Turkish athlete refused to fight Armenian David Khachaturian’s

December 21, 2014 By administrator

10157284_664954980206822_9130944914312793576_nYesterday’s press conference after Turkey refused to allow the athlete to compete ProFC Middleweight Champion David Khachaturian’s reason for acting from the 1915 Genocide poster. That fight will be shown live on television in Turkey. “If we agree with the poster Manuk Gasparyan,” said the coach of the Turkish athlete. Turkish coach Hassan Gyanjbeyn said. “You are engaged in the international political arena existent phenomenon propaganda.” David Khachatryan, in turn countered. “You can record your poster on the post that 1915 has not been and will not believe the nations.” The parties agree and the match was postponed. Turkish athlete has challenged the Russian sportsman Oleg Afaneseve. The fight will take place tomorrow at 19:00. Recall that ProFC Middleweight Champion David Khachatryan is supported by the lack of public bodies decided to accept Russia’s arajarakutyunn and will act under the Russian flag .
see more on http://armlur.am/163255/

Filed Under: Genocide, News Tagged With: Armenian, athletic, fight, refused, Turkish

3 Turkish men arrested in Germany over spying charges

December 19, 2014 By administrator

186400German prosecutors said Thursday, Dec 18 that they had arrested three Turkish men accused of spying on compatriots in Germany for Turkish intelligence, but Ankara denied that the suspects were linked to the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), Hurriyet Daily News reported.

The federal prosecutor’s office said two of the suspects – identified in line with German privacy rules only as Muhammed Taha G. and Göksel G. – were arrested Wednesday at Frankfurt airport. The third, Ahmet Duran Y., was arrested at his home in western Germany.

Muhammed Taha G. is accused of handling the other two as agents, and they collected information for him on Turks in Germany as well as their “organizational structures,” prosecutors said in a statement.

They did not elaborate or say when the alleged spying took place, but said arrest warrants were issued on Nov 11.

The suspects were ordered to be remanded in custody pending a possible indictment.

Turkish security officials, who spoke to daily Hürriyet on condition of anonymity, said the three suspects had no links to MİT or the Prime Ministry. The same sources stressed that arrests came soon after media outlets affiliated to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) alleged that the Turkish Cooperation and Development Agency (TİKA) was being used by MİT to recruit agents in Germany. They also noted that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had recently slammed the European Union regarding a Dec 14 police operation on the Gülen community in Turkey, according to the HDN.

Germany is home to a large Turkish community.

In August, Turkey summoned Germany’s ambassador and demanded an explanation over a German magazine report that Germany’s foreign intelligence agency listed Turkey, a NATO ally, as a target for intelligence gathering.

German officials refused to confirm the report, the HDN says

Related links:

Hurriyet Daily News. Germany arrests three Turks accused of spying, Turkey denies involvement

Filed Under: News Tagged With: arrested, Germany, men, spaying, Turkish

Turkish professor assigns students to deny Armenian Genocide at exam

December 19, 2014 By administrator

denial-of genocideProfessor of the history of Turkish Dokuz Eylül University Turkan Basigit assigned his students to come to the exam prepared to deny the fact of Armenian Genocide, Armenian News – NEWS.am reports.

According to the Turkish Radikal newspaper, the homework assigned by the Turkish professor to the students caused active stir in social networks. Turkan Basigit demanded that all students come to the exam with written paper that professionally and from the historical point of view denies the basis of documents supporting the fact of the Armenian Genocide in Turkey. Students have scanned the assignment and spread it in social networks, where many users joined the protest and expressed dissatisfaction with such an assignment.

In particular, many users of social networks asked the Turkish professor, what he would do if some students will come to the conclusion in their academic papers, which support the fact of the Armenian Genocide.

Filed Under: Articles, Genocide Tagged With: armenian genocide, deny, professor, student, Turkish

Cengiz Çandar, Turkish Intellectuals Who Have Recognized The Armenian Genocide.

December 18, 2014 By administrator

 By: Hambersom Aghbashian

Cegis-CandarCengiz Çandar (born 1948) is a Turkish journalist and a former war correspondent,  graduated from Ankara University in 1970 with a Bachelor’s degree in political science and Int. relations. He began his career as a journalist in 1976 in “Vatan” after living some years abroad due to his opposition to the regime in Turkey. An expert for the Middle East (Lebanon and Palestine) and the Balkans , Çandar worked for the Turkish News Agency and for Cumhuriyet, Hürriyet, Referans and Güneş newspapers as a war correspondent. Çandar served as special adviser to Turkish president Turgut Özal between 1991 and 1993. From 1997, he lectured for two years on “History and Politics in the Middle East” at Bilgi University in Istanbul. Between 1999 and 2000, he did research work on “Turkey of the 21st century” as a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Int. Center for Scholars, and was a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. His description of the 1998 events in Turkey as a “post-modern coup” gained notice internationally. In 2007, he condemned the authorities for depriving Aghtamar* of its Armenian past by renaming it to “Akdamar”. He is the author of many books.(1)

                        Jon Coevet a free-lance journalist based in Istanbul wrote in “Washington Report on Middle East Affairs”, December 2000, quoting Çandar saying “An open society based on social consensus, a society without taboos which stands tall with enough self-confidence is the biggest source of strength. Let us confront our history. Let us do some soul-searching.”(2)

                       Cengiz Çandar participated in the Conference entitled “The Armenians during the Collapse of the Ottoman Empire” that was held at Istanbul’s Bogazici University in September 2005. Several hundreds of nationalists gathered in front of the university shouting out slogans “Betrayers”, “It’s Turkey – love it or leave it”. During a briefing for members of the press, eggs and tomatoes were thrown at journalist Cengiz Çandar, as a sign of protest.(3)

                        Çandar has been to Armenia several times and closely follows Turkey-Armenia relations. He wrote many articles concerning Turkish-Armenian relations, “Turkey-Armenia – In the freezer” On 23 April 2010, “From Yerevan to Bursa: writing history anew” On 14 October On the road without return 10 October 2009.(4)

                         Scott Peterson wrote in the “Christian Science Monitor- March 17, 2010”, Prime Min.Erdogan, was angry over the decision by a US congressional committee and by the Swedish parliament to call the 1915 deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians a “genocide,”.  NATO member and EU candidate Turkey does not want to be lumped with Nazi Germany, Cambodia, or Rwanda as perpetrators of genocide in the 20th century. “There are currently 170,000 Armenians living in our country,” Erdogan told the BBC Turkish service in London. “Only 70,000 of them are Turkish citizens, but we are tolerating the remaining 100,000. If necessary, I may have to tell these 100,000 to go back to their country” .“It seems a very careless statement,” says Mr. Çandar. I don’t think that he will be implementing that, sending Armenians working here back to Armenia,” says Candar. “But it is a signal sent to Armenia to deter them from supporting [such] genocide resolutions out loud.” (5)

                        On March 20, 2010, Taraf newspaper wrote ” The Prime Minister criticized Cengiz Çandar (of Radikal newspaper) who asked for a public apology for the PM’s earlier deportation threats to Armenian illegal immigrant workers .” “These claims [of Armenian Genocide] are baseless and cannot stain our history…I am calling on those journalists and others who try to give us humanity lessons: Be Turkey’s and the Turkish Nation’s lawyer first. … I am calling on those who advice me to apologize: We know whom to apologize very well. Whose lawyer are you?”(6)

                        The following are some excerpts from  Çandar’s article ” Turkish Awakening on Armenian, Kurdish  Issues? Al-Monitor , April 28, 2013“. He wrote, “For the past 3 years, Turkey has been holding, Armenian massacre [1915] observations at Taksim Square. The first, at Haydarpasa Station, which was the starting point of Istanbul’s Armenian intellectuals on their trips of no return. It was repeated in 2012 with larger crowd which met in  Sultanahmet tourism area, where Armenian intellectuals and politicians were first assembled and then detained in 1915. This year, the dimensions of April 24, 1915, suddenly changed. The observances spread to Turkey’s most important political center of Diyarbakir and to Dersim. As the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide approaches in 2015, could there be a totally unexpected development on the Armenian issue in Turkey? Will this affect Turkish-Armenian relations and change the geopolitics of the Caucasia? That is a question to ponder as 2015 nears.  The answer might not be all that difficult if one looks at the developments on the Kurdish issue in 2013 and the recent observances of the 1915 disaster defined as genocide that fell upon the Armenians. The impossible is impossible in Turkey.(7)                                                                                               

——————————————————————————————————————————-

*Aghtamar  is the second by size of four islands in Lake Van in Western Armenia ,(currently occupied by  Turkey). It is well famous for it’s  Armenian Cathedral of the Holy Cross. In 1951 the Turkish government made a decision to destroy the church, but the writer Yasar Kemal managed to stop the destruction. Between May 2005 and October 2006, the church underwent restoration program. The cross which was sent by the Armenian Patriarchate of Turkey was erected on the top of the church on October 2, 2010. after being sanctified by Armenian clergymen. Since 2010, every year a mass is held in the church too.

1- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cengiz_%C3%87andar

2- http://www.wrmea.org/2000-december/armenian-genocide-resolution-nearly-the-end-of-a-beautiful-u.s.-turkey-relationship.html

3- http://www.armeniapedia.org/wiki/Conference:_Ottoman_Armenians_During_the_Decline_of_the

4- http://www.esiweb.org/index.php?lang=en&id=322&debate_ID=4&slide_ID=8

5- http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0317/Armenian-genocide-talk-has-Turkey-threatening-to-expel-Armenians

6- http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/nationalist-first-islamist-second-the-armenian-issue-shows-the-limits-of-the-erdogan-government

7-http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/04/pkk-withdrawal-armenian-genocide-day.html

Filed Under: Articles, Genocide Tagged With: armenian genocide, Cengiz Candar, Intellectuals, Recognized, Turkish

Turkish Mayor Apologizing to the ARMENIANS, Assyrians, Yezidis

December 16, 2014 By administrator

December 16, 2014

 Ahmet-TurkDuring an event held in Sweden, the mayor of the Turkish city of Mardin,  Ahmet Turk apologize to the Armenians, the Assyrians and the Yezidies for the fact that certain Kurdish ahirets had been accomplices during the Genocide of 1915, report the Turkish Demokrathaber.net report “Armenpress”.

“Unfortunately, the Kurds, who implemented and executed the government’s decision taken in 1914-1915, were overtly used under the name of Islam. We now feel the bitterness about the participation of our fathers and forefathers in those Massacres as their children and grandchildren,” Ahmet Turk mentioned, adding that the Kurds will never forget the pain that those nations experienced, “We as Armenians and Assyrians and our Yezidi brothers to forgive us, “the Mayor of Mardin Said.

Armenian Genocide

In 1915, leaders of the Turkish government set in motion a plan to expel and massacre Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. Though reports vary, most sources agree that there were about 2 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the time of the massacre. By the early 1920s, when the massacres and deportations finally ended, some 1.5 million of Turkey’s Armenians were dead, with many more forcibly removed from the country. Today, most historians call this event a genocide–a premeditated and systematic campaign to exterminate an entire people. However, the Turkish government does not acknowledge the enormity or scope of these events. Despite pressure from Armenians and social justice advocates throughout the world, it is still illegal in Turkey to talk about what happened to Armenians during this era.

THE ROOTS OF GENOCIDE: THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

The Armenian people have made their home in the Caucasus region of Eurasia for some 3,000 years. For some of that time, the kingdom of Armenia was an independent entity–at the beginning of the 4th century AD, for instance, it became the first nation in the world to make Christianity its official religion–but for the most part, control of the region shifted from one empire to another. During the 15th century, Armenia was absorbed into the mighty Ottoman Empire.

Filed Under: Genocide, News Tagged With: apologize, armenian genocide, mardin, mayor, Turkish

Turkish witch hunt, Erdogan Islamist “Tahsiyeciler” versus the Gulen Islamist movement

December 16, 2014 By administrator

By Mustafa Akyol,

Zaman editor-in-chief Erem Dumanli, escorted by plainclothes police officers, is cheered on by his colleagues as he leaves the headquarters of Zaman daily newspaper in IstanbulOn Dec. 14, Turkey woke up to breaking news: Turkish police detained 25 people, including top media figures and police officers, simultaneously raiding addresses in 13 cities across the country. The detainees included Ekrem Dumanli, the editor-in-chief of Zaman, Turkey’s top-selling newspaper, and Hidayet Karaca, the director of STV, a news channel. What they all had in common was their affiliation with the Fethullah Gulen movement — an Islamic community that once was the best ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but which turned into his worst enemy after the corruption investigations of December 2013. Report Al-Monitor’s

What made these arrests even more controversial was that they were foretold by the mysterious “Fuat Avni,” a faceless Twitter account that claims to be a hidden deep throat within the top echelons of the Erdogan government. With some 629,000 followers (@fuatavnifuat), this account wrote on Dec. 11, or three days before the arrests, that “the Tyrant” (i.e., Erdogan) has ordered a new crackdown on opposition media and some 150 journalists would be arrested soon. Since then, supportive crowds have been flocking to the building of the daily Zaman, which “Fuat Avni” identified as the main target of the upcoming raid. On Sunday, the warnings turned true, when the police indeed came to Zaman to detain Ekrem Dumanli, in the midst of a large crowd cheering for press freedom.

Yet, at least so far, the “crackdown on opposition media” has been less widespread than what Fuat Avni had predicted. As the press reported, the detainee list includes some 31 names, at the top of which is Fethullah Gulen himself. (But his arrest was impossible, since he has lived in Pennsylvania, in the United States since 1999.) Others are either certain policemen alleged to be members of the movement, or certain journalists and film producers. And they are all blamed of leading or taking part in an “operation” against an Islamist group called “Tahsiyeciler,” which the Gulen movement allegedly sees as a threat or rival to itself.

The “Tahsiyeciler,” or, literally, “those who make footnotes,” are a small Turkish Islamist community that claims to follow the teachings of Islamic scholar Said Nursi (1878-1960). “Yet they are more radical in ideology than most Nursi followers,” an expert on this tradition told me, “in that they denounce democracy and advocate an Islamist state.” Yet, the same expert added that the group has never been violent. However, both the leader of the group, Mehmet Dogan, and 10 of his followers were arrested in 2010 in a widespread detention of alleged al-Qaeda members all across Turkey, which was then reported in the international media, including The New York Times.

Dogan spent some 17 months in prison, but was later released due to a controversy about the evidence: On the hand grenades that were allegedly found in his home, fingerprints were found that belonged to the very police who raided the place. The police explained this as a result of not wearing gloves, but the suspects insisted that it was the police themselves who put the hand grenades there, just to be able to label the suspects as terrorists.

In August, some members of the Tahsiyeciler, who believed that they were victims of a conspiracy, went to a prosecutor to complain about the “parallel structure” — or the alleged Gulen movement network and the judiciary, about which Erdogan has been calling for complaints. The prosecutor who ordered the Dec. 14 arrests based his accusations on this complaint. The detained policemen are blamed for conspiring against Tahsiyeciler by putting weapons in their homes just to “find” them.

But what about the journalists? That is where things get tricky. The journalists are accused by the prosecutor of arranging the “propaganda side” of the scheme against Tahsiyeciler. Some of them are even accused of writing the script for a TV series on STV, titled “Tek Türkiye” (“One Turkey”), in which the Tahsiyeciler group is depicted as a terror group controlled by an evil cabal that tries to destabilize Turkey. The prosecutor argues that Gulen followers within the media and security forces worked hand in hand, in a hierarchy, to cook up a conspiracy.

Notably, this was the very logic used by both the pro-Gulen media and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government when they were allies (2007-11), to defend the imprisonment of many secularist journalists accused of acting on the orders of a would-be junta in the military. That is why many are correct today in reminding the spokesmen of the Gulen movement that what they protest today is exactly what they did just a few years ago: to jump from one alleged crime to a larger conspiracy theory, to demonize and punish a large group of people, whose only “crime” may be just to share an ideology or community.

The crucial question is whether the temporarily detained journalists will be ordered arrested by judges for a trial in custody, which could put them in jail for a long time. That is what happened during the “coup cases” of 2007-11, when dozens of journalists were imprisoned for months and even years. In that case, Turkey would be just repeating the same nightmare, only with different actors in different positions. Some pro-Gulen journalists who were once cheering for the arrest of “coup collaborators” would find themselves as the new “coup collaborators” in jail.

Meanwhile, the AKP government and Erdogan seem to recognize that what they are doing is a witch hunt — but a necessary one. (In fact, Erdogan openly declared in June that he would not shy from a “witch hunt” against the Gulen movement.) But they give the assurance that this is “the final battle” before a truly wonderful democracy — or, say, the witch hunt to end all witch hunts. Many others fear, however, that this might just be the beginning of a darker, more authoritarian era, where the hunt for “the traitors” to the nation may never end.

Mustafa Akyol is a columnist for Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse, a columnist for the Turkish Hurriyet Daily News, and a monthly contributing opinion writer for The International New York Times. His articles have also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian.  On Twitter: @AkyolinEnglish

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Erdogan, Gulen Movement, Turkish, witch hunt

Turkish soccer fans go on trial over coup accusations

December 16, 2014 By administrator

186207Thirty-five Turkish soccer fans went on trial on Tuesday accused of attempting to stage a coup during mass protests last year, in a case the opposition and rights groups say is an abuse of the justice system by a government bent on revenge, Reuters reports.

Prosecutors are seeking life sentences for all of them, from a supporters’ group of major Istanbul team Besiktas. They are accused of helping organize the protests that erupted in Istanbul’s Taksim square in May 2013 and grew into a major challenge to then-Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan, who won a presidential election in August, has vowed to hunt down the “traitors” behind the protests and a corruption scandal which emerged just over six months later, both of which he cast as an orchestrated bid to topple him.

The trial began two days after Turkey drew international criticism for the detention by police of prominent media figures in what Erdogan said was a response to “dirty operations” by his political enemies.

The indictment accuses the soccer fans of seeking to occupy Erdogan’s Istanbul office near the Besiktas stadium “to create the appearance that a weakness of authority had emerged in the country”, and of drawing foreign media to the protest areas.

“They tried to create an image evoking government changes in some Middle Eastern countries known as the ‘Arab Spring’ and aimed to overthrow the legally established government of the Turkish Republic using illegal methods,” the indictment said, according to Reuters.

The ‘Carsi’ supporters group played a prominent role in the protests, which drew a diverse crowd of hundreds of thousands across Turkey. An anti-police slogan chanted at matches rang out regularly and at one point Carsi members commandeered a mechanical digger and drove it toward police lines.

The unrest began as a peaceful protest against the demolition of Gezi Park, a leafy corner of Taksim, but spread nationwide after a brutal police crackdown. Prosecutors have since launched a series of court cases against those involved.

“The make-up of the AK Party government has run and its true face has emerged. The Carsi trial is the revenge for Gezi,” said Umut Oran, an Istanbul MP for the main opposition CHP, whose members ripped up a copy of the indictment outside the court.

Advocacy group Human Rights Watch said the prosecution was a “blatant misuse of the criminal justice system”.

“Charging these Besiktas football club fans as enemies of the state for joining a public protest is a ludicrous travesty,” HRW Turkey researcher Emma Sinclair-Webb said in a statement.

“It reveals a great deal about the enormous pressure being exerted on Turkey’s justice system by the government,” she said, calling for the prosecutor to ask the court for an acquittal.

Related links:

Reuters. Turkish soccer fans go on trial accused of coup attempt

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: fans, soccer, Trial, Turkish

Turkish police raid newspaper, detain editor-in-chief, head of broadcaster

December 14, 2014 By administrator

ISTANBUL

n_75588_1Turkish police have launched a media operation to detain 31 people, including media figures and former police chiefs, simultaneously raiding addresses in 13 provinces across the country.

The raid on daily Zaman occurred at 7.15 a.m. local time, as supporters of the newspaper stood guard in front of the office building over rumors that such an operation would take place.

Police returned to the newspaper’s office at around 2.00 p.m. on Dec. 14 after leaving the building in the morning without starting any proceedings. Zaman editor-in-chief Ekrem Dumanlı was taken to police station after being shown the notification of his detention.

Many of Turkey’s media organs were broadcasting live in the newspaper’s office when Dumanlı was detained.

As the raids were being carried out in the morning, the crowd outside the Zaman offices chanted slogans and held banners reading, “The free press cannot be silenced.” Dumanlı also made a speech, broadcast live on television, defiantly calling on the police to detain him.

Samanyolu Media Group Head Hidayet Karaca and a producer, scriptwriter and director were also detained, as well as Tufan Ergüder, the former head of the Istanbul Police Department’s anti-terror branch and the former head of the Hakkari Police Department.

In addition, three police officers have been separately detained in Tunceli, Mardin and Şırnak provinces and have been sent to Istanbul, Doğan News Agency reported.

‘Detentions for launching armed terror organization’

The Istanbul Public Prosecutor’s Office has released a public statement, giving the list of individuals to be detained in the operation.

“The detentions have been ordered [for the people on the list] in order to take their testimonies on charges of founding and directing an armed terror organization, being a member of this organization, and engaging in forgery and slander,” the statement said.

A total of 11 people have been detained so far, the statement added.

Istanbul Deputy Public Prosecutor Orhan Kapıcı has declined to comment on whether Fethullah Gülen was on the list.

The semi-official Anadolu Agency reported that the operation was launched for the detention of 32 people, including senior police officers and media members, on charges of fabricating crimes and evidence in a 2010 investigation into an organization reportedly closed to al-Qaeda.

Some 122 people were detained in an operation against the “Tahşiye Organization” in 2010. Mehmet Doğan, a senior leader of the organization, spent 17 months in prison before being released. It was claimed that retired imam Doğan was opposed to the ideas of Fethullah Gülen.

Zaman and Samanyolu are known for ties to U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, who has been at odds with the Turkish government, particularly since last December.

The government accuses the Gülen movement of trying to stage a “coup” via a large corruption probe that broke in December 2013, which included a number of former Cabinet ministers and their sons, along with many state officials.

The latest move comes only two days after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signaled a fresh campaign against Gülen’s supporters.

In his most recent tweets posted on Dec. 10, mysterious Twitter user Fuat Avni, whose identity remains unknown, suggested that several journalists close to Gülen movement, including Zaman editor-in-chief Ekrem Dumanlı, would be detained in a raid on Dec. 12. He also gave many details about the dates, names and cities of alleged police operations, but later on Dec. 11 he posted more tweets suggesting that the police operations had been cancelled after the raid was revealed.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç had earlier said rumors voiced by Fuat Avni over the potential detention of dozens of journalists should be taken “seriously.”

“I find the Twitter posts to be serious. I hope they will not come to pass, or not come true to this extent, for anything to happen out of jurisdiction,” Arınç said during budget discussions at Parliament late on Dec. 11.

December/14/2014

Filed Under: News Tagged With: media, police, raid, Turkish

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