375 More Organizations Shut Down
ISTANBUL, Turkey (A.W.)—Turkish authorities dismissed an additional 15,000 civil servants and shut down an additional 375 organizations on Nov. 22, in the government’s ongoing “terror probe.” More than 100,000 public workers had already been fired for connections to the country’s failed military coup in July.
The most recent dismissals came the morning when the European Parliament was scheduled to debate freezing accession talks for Turkey to join the European Union (EU), reported the New York Times.
A European Commission recently expressed its concern that the Turkish government’s poor human rights and press freedom record was making accession to the EU increasingly difficult.
“Human rights advocates have also been alarmed by a measure, favored by [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, to declare an amnesty for an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 men convicted of child abuse and rape, provided they have married their victims. The measure, which applies to what it calls ‘consensual’ cases of child marriage, was scheduled to be debated on Tuesday in the Turkish Parliament, but it was instead returned to committee, forestalling an immediate vote. The legislation has infuriated women’s groups in Turkey and has drawn criticism from United Nations agencies,” read a part of the New York Times report on the latest crackdowns.
A day earlier, on Nov. 21, the Mayor of Metropolitan Mardin and member of the Democratic Regions Party (DBP) Ahmet Turk, was detained on Nov. 21 along with Artuklu district Mayor Emin Irmak, in what Turkish authorities called a “terror investigation.”
Turk was suspended from duty for days earlier, on Nov. 17, on trumped up charges in an ongoing terror probe to find links between the DBP and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Authorities raided and conducted searches at Turk’s residence in Mardin at around 10:15 a.m. before he was subsequently taken to the police headquarters to testify, reported Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper.
Irmak, the Mayor of Mardin’s central Artuklu district, of Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), was detained at his office as a part of the operation.
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