ARBITRARY DETENTION AND ARREST
Throughout the week, prosecutors ordered the detention of at least 129 people over alleged links to the Gülen movement. In October 2020, a UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) opinion said that widespread or systematic imprisonment of individuals with alleged links to the group may amount to crimes against humanity. Solidarity with OTHERS has compiled a detailed database to monitor the Gülen-linked mass detentions since a failed coup in July 2016.
16 July: Turkish police detained 74 people across 27 provinces over their alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement.
ARBITRARY DEPRIVATION OF LIFE
19 July: A total of 451 civilians, including children, have been killed by police from 2007 through the first half of 2024, according to a report by the Baran Tursun Foundation.
ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES
No news has emerged of Yusuf Bilge Tunç, a former public sector worker who was sacked from his job by a decree-law during the 2016-2018 state of emergency and who was reported missing as of August 6, 2019, in what appears to be one of the latest cases in a string of suspected enforced disappearance of government critics since 2016.
FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY AND ASSOCIATION
20 July: Turkish police detained 20 protesters in Istanbul and the capital Ankara during commemoration marches for the 33 people who lost their lives in the ISIS suicide bomb attack in 2015 in the Suruç district of Turkey’s eastern Şanlıurfa province.
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND MEDIA
16 July: The news on the acquittal of Human Rights Association Co-Chair Eren Keskin in the lawsuit against her for some statements about yoga instructor Akif Manaf and the acquittal of 3 lawyers who were on trial for ‘insulting’ Akif Manaf were ordered to be deleted by the decision of Şile Criminal Judicature of Peace.
17 July: Turkey has become the first country to impose a ban on access to Wattpad, a popular digital publishing platform with over 90 million monthly users worldwide.
17 July: Turkey banned access to 219,059 URLs in 2023, including 14,680 news articles, predominantly covering allegations of corruption and misconduct.
JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE & RULE OF LAW
18 July: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has appointed Metin Kıratlı, Turkey’s top bureaucrat serving at Erdoğan’s presidential palace, as a new member of Turkey’s Constitutional Court, casting yet another shadow over the court’s independence.
KURDISH MINORITY
18 July: A regional branch of the Human Rights Association (İHD) has released a midyear report on the human rights situation in Turkey’s eastern and southeastern regions, detailing 3,895 rights violations.
19 July: A Turkish court sentenced Selahattin Demirtaş, former co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), to more than two years in prison for remarks made between 2015 and 2017, alleging that they denigrated state institutions.
OTHER MINORITIES
17 July: Melih Gökçek, the former mayor of Ankara and a prominent politician, has targeted Turkey’s ethnic and religious minorities, claiming that millions of Greeks, Armenians and Jews are posing as Muslim Turks and that their ethnicity should be indicated on national IDs.
PRISON CONDITIONS
16 July: Inmates at an Antalya prison in southern Turkey are enduring hardship due to sudden and prolonged water outages amid the summer heat.
REFUGEES AND MIGRANTS
17 July: Ahmed Aabo, a Syrian refugee in Turkey, was temporarily denied critical HIV treatment due to bureaucratic hurdles, sparking concerns about human rights violations and public health policy, as he was detained and transferred between repatriation centers, including in Adana and Arnavutköy, after his temporary protection status was deactivated under the G-78 restriction code.
TORTURE AND ILL-TREATMENT
16 July: A person named H. D. Ö., who was stopped by a plain-clothes police officer in Sarıyer district of Istanbul for GBT, was subjected to physical violence of the police officers. The physical violence continued in the police car in which he was taken after being detained and he was wounded in various parts of his body.
18 July: Mehmet Beyret, a 35-year-old computer engineer who was arrested pending trial two months ago in southwestern Turkey over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, suffered a brain hemorrhage while in prison, having insufficient medical access.
18 July: The United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) reviewed Turkey's record on torture and ill-treatment. In light of alternative reports submitted by over 40 civil society organizations, detailing systematic torture, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and widespread impunity since 2016, the committee asked questions to the Turkish delegation.
TRANSNATIONAL REPRESSION
16 July: A total of 232 schools run by the faith-based Gülen movement across 21 countries have been seized by the Turkish government since 2016.
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