Bylock and Gulen… Erdogan drives 15 Turks to prison

Trumped-up charges the Turkish regime often leveles at its critics and opponents, both civilian and military, to throw them behind bars.

• Erdogan’s politics push the Turkish Lira to the bottom

• Erdogan’s policies heighten Turkey’s economic crisis

“Turkish authorities on Tuesday issued an arrest warrant for 15 people, including military personnel, over alleged affiliation with the militant group Fethullah Gulen.” According to the pro-regime Hurriyet newspaper’s website.

According to the newspaper, the Counter-Terrorism Bureau and the Izmir prosecutor’s office issued arrest warrants against 15 people, including military personnel.

In its statement, the Public Prosecutor’s Office said the reason behind the arrests was the wanted individuals’ use of ByLock IM and their membership in the Gulen movement, which is banned in Ankara.

Turkey banned the ByLock app after the alleged coup attempt, claiming that “Gulenists used it on the evening of July 15, 2016, when a group of soldiers tried to overthrow the government, killing about 250 people.”

The app was completely shut down in March 2016, before the Turkish government declared the Gulen group a “terrorist organization.”

• Will the opposition parties succeed in bringing down Erdogan’s regime?

• The expulsion of ambassadors… Erdogan opens Turkey’s “doors to international rage”

Counter-terrorism teams launched a security campaign to arrest the wanted individuals, arresting 12 of them and searching for the rest.

Ankara accuses Fethullah Gulen, a Pennsylvania-based Turkish preacher, of masterminding the alleged coup attempt. The latter strongly denies this, while the Turkish opposition claims that the events of the night of July 15 were a “staged coup” to liquidate opposition soldiers and members of civil society organizations.

“The Turkish authorities have regularly carried out thousands of arrests since the attempted coup, accusing them of having contact with the Gulen group, as well as being largely separated from their jobs in the army, universities and other government jobs by presidential decrees”.

Since the coup, Turkey has launched a “purification” campaign across all public sectors that has resulted in the detention of some 80,000 people awaiting trial, and the arbitrary removal or suspension of about 170,000 government employees, military, police, and others, in direct presidential decrees issued by Erdogan.

• Erdogan’s Critics Say Demand for Expulsions is Distraction from Economy Woes

• Opponents of Erdogan’s government subject to surveillance by the Turkish embassy

The fact-finding report on the attempted coup, which was completed by the parliament in 2017, has yet to be published.