A court in Ankara has issued arrest warrants for 103 people accused of “membership in a terrorist organization,” the chief prosecutor’s office announced. The suspects are among 225 people detained earlier this week. Thirty-two of them have since been released. Warrants have been issued for 241 suspects.
According to the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet, those arrested include several members of the Turkish environmental organization Tema and the editor-in-chief of the LGBTI+ organization Kaos GL, Yıldız Tar. Trade unionists, lawyers, and left-wing activists were also detained. Others have been placed under house arrest.
A NATO summit is scheduled to take place in the Turkish capital on July 7 and 8. Heads of state and government from the 32 NATO member countries are expected, including US Donald Trump.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused the Turkish government of abusing anti-terror laws to silence people ahead of the NATO summit. This contradicts the alliance’s founding values, said Benjamin Ward, HRW’s deputy director for Europe and Central Asia. The organization also pointed to long-standing repression of the opposition.
Government officials rejected the criticism. AKP politician and head of the security and intelligence committee in the Turkish parliament, Veysal Tipioğlu, told the state-run Anadolu news agency that terms like “martial law” and “state of emergency” were not applicable. What Turkey is doing, he said, is no different from measures taken by other countries.
Numerous Turkish journalists complained about being excluded from the international meeting. Erol Önderoğlu, Turkey representative for Reporters Without Borders, told the German news agency dpa that a large portion of Turkish media had not received accreditation and would be excluded from the summit.
The opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet and the opposition broadcasters Sözcü and Halk TV said they had not received accreditation. Several affected journalists posted NATO’s rejection letter on social networks, which reportedly stated that the decision was “final.” The Turkish Journalists’ Union described it as an “embargo against independent media” and accused NATO of violating “the principles of democracy, individual freedom, and the rule of law” that it emphasizes in its founding treaty.
Conditions for independent and government-critical media in Turkey have deteriorated significantly in recent years. Journalists are repeatedly confronted with fines and court proceedings based on vaguely formulated accusations.
Ankara governor’s office recently also
Source: www.zeit.de
