Human Rights Turkey

Turkey, where the crushing torture never stops…….


 

Turkey, where Erdogan’s imperial fist is in your face at every turn…

 

Turkey’s Reign of Terror: The Persecution of Minority Alevis

by Uzay Bulut  •  December 2, 2018 at 5:00 am

  • The Alevi-owned broadcaster, TV10, for example,was closed down in September 2016, two months after the failed coup attempt against Erdogan, for allegedly “threatening national security and belonging to a terror organization.”
  • A TV10 cameraman, Kemal Demir, was taken into police custody on November 25, 2017 and arrested on December 2. Veli Büyükşahin, TV10’s chairman of the board, and Veli Haydar Güleç, a TV10 producer, were arrested on January 10. All are still in prison.
  • “TV10 did not belong to a major business. While it was trying to carry out its activities with its few employees and very limited resources, it was closed down by executive order. Moreover, its properties were seized [by the government] and then sold by the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (SDIF)… The indictments against them contain no criminal element and judges have turned down the indictments twice. Yet, these people have been detained for 10 months and there is still uncertainty as to when they will be tried in a court and when a result will be obtained from the hearings.” — Kemal Peköz, MP from the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), in a speech before parliament November 1.

 

Many Alevis in Turkey have protested that their houses of worship, know as cem houses, are not officially recognized by the government. Yet even these protests are quashed. Pictured: The Kartal Cemevi Alevi cem house in Istanbul, Turkey. (Image source: Cemyildiz/Wikimedia Commons)

In Turkey, several methods are employed to eliminate religious minorities, not only by physical violence. Instead, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan tries to erase minority faiths by preventing their ability to function by denying them the freedom to establish and safely operate their own institutions and places of worship. The Alevis, for instance, a historically persecuted religious minority in Turkey, are all-too-familiar with this form of oppression.

 

The Alevi-owned broadcaster, TV10, for example, was closed down in September 2016, two months after the failed coup attempt against Erdoğan, for allegedly “threatening national security and belonging to a terror organization.”

 

A TV10 cameraman, Kemal Demir, was taken into police custody on November 25, 2017 and arrested on December 2. Veli Büyükşahin, TV10’s chairman of the board, and Veli Haydar Güleç, a TV10 producer, were arrested on January 10. All are still in prison.

 

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