violations against hundreds of thousands of people in turkey: UN reported

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The United Nations is throwing serious human rights violations against hundreds of thousands of people in turkey, committed since the coup d ‘ état in the summer of 2016.

Roji Kurd: In a report by the un security council, among others: Teachers and prosecutors, torture and sexual abuse of prisoners. About a hundred pregnant women or women who had just given birth were arrested because their men were under terrorist. The Commissioner calls this “outrageous and utterly cruel”. we do not talk about Somalia or eritrea or tajikistan.

This is a report on an eu candidate country and nato allies. Oh yes, almost forgotten – how does ankara respond? Right: The Turkish government accuses the un of terrorism.

On July 15, 2016, elements of the military attempted to carry out a coup d’état against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. The attempted coup left at least 241 citizens and government law enforcement dead. During the attempted coup fighter jets bombed Turkey’s parliament. In the aftermath, the government declared a state of emergency, jailed thousands of soldiers and embarked on a wholesale purge of public officials, police, teachers, judges, and prosecutors. Most of those jailed, dismissed, or suspended were accused of being followers of the US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen. The government, with the support of main opposition parties, accuses the Gülen movement of masterminding the coup and labels it a terrorist organization. However, the crackdown also extended to the pro-Kurdish opposition party, with two leaders and other MPs arrested and placed in pretrial detention, along with many of its elected mayors, denying millions of voters their elected representatives.

The war in Syria continues to impact Turkey, which hosts an estimated 2.7 million Syrian refugees. There have been regular bomb attacks in Turkey by individuals allegedly linked to the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). Authorities blamed ISIS for a June attack in which three suicide bombers targeted Istanbul airport killing 45, and an August attack on a Kurdish wedding party in Gaziantep that killed 57.

In August, Turkish military forces entered the ISIS-occupied Syrian border town of Jarablus and attacked Syrian Kurdish forces in the area, apparently because of their links to the Turkey-based armed group the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The PKK and a related armed group, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), stepped up attacks in 2016, including a March suicide attack killing 37 in central Ankara, and a June attack in Istanbul killing 11, as well as regular attacks on military and police targets.

Government-led efforts to silence media criticism and scrutiny of government policy in Turkey involved five main trends: the prosecution and jailing of journalists; takeover of media companies—including the daily Zaman newspaper—by appointing government-approved trustees and seizing assets and the closing down of media; removal of critical television stations from the main state-owned satellite distribution platform and their closure; physical attacks and threats against journalists; and government pressure on media to fire critical journalists and cancel their press accreditation. Blocking of news websites critical to the government also increased. Turkey made the highest number of requests to Twitter of any country to censor individual accounts.

In January 2016, over 1,000 university lecturers who signed a petition criticizing government policy in the southeast and calling for a return to political negotiations with the PKK, were harshly targeted by Erdoğan in speeches and then subjected to a criminal investigation for “insulting” the Turkish state. The investigation had not been concluded at time of writing. Some universities dismissed signatories of the petition, and 68 were fired by decree in September and October.

International pressure, including from the UN Secretary General, helped to secure the release of some journalists from unjustified detention, including Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) representative Erol Onderoğlu in June. However, following the coup attempt such pressure appeared to have less effect.

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