Search Results for: turkey coup

The Turkish Court of Cassation, the country’s highest appellate court, Tuesday overturned convictions against four human rights defenders including Honorary Chair of Amnesty International of Turkey, Taner Kılıç. All four were formerly charged with terrorism-related offenses. Amnesty International released a statement celebrating the overturning of the “baseless convictions.” Amnesty International also said the court’s decision [...]

In 2002, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in Turkey, defeating Kemalist hegemony, there was a glimmer of hope in the West for the overwhelmingly Muslim country. However, the experience of Turkey over the past 20 years is one descending into an authoritarian regime with clampdowns [...]

On December 17, 2010, a vegetable vendor in Tunisia set himself ablaze in open defiance of police harassment, igniting the spark for a wave of democratic revolutions that spread like wildfire across the Arab world. In the decade since the revolutions swept the region, Tunisia has stood out as a success story, being the only [...]

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Monday that Turkey violated a prior judgement in the case Kavala v. Turkey by keeping activist and philanthropist Osman Kavala in detention. The court had previously ruled that Kavala was wrongfully detained, ordering Turkey to release Kavala and pay damages. Kavala was arrested in 2017, ostensibly for [...]

A Turkish court Monday sentenced activist Osman Kavala to a life sentence. The sentence came from an arrest in 2013 over the Gezi protests. The protest was a small demonstration in Istanbul park which later led to a nationwide anti-government protest. Originally found guilty of charges in 2013 for being a part of the protests, [...]

When Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine in February, the international community responded with “unprecedented” and “severe” sanctions against Russia. Their expansive scale essentially leads to Russia’s economic and even political isolation. The purpose of the sanctions is clear: to punish Putin’s regime for the violation of international law and stop its military aggression against [...]

The Russian-Ukrainian crisis started to deteriorate in early 2021 when Ukraine arrested pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk on allegations of conspiring a coup d’etat, and Russia initiated military exercises near the Ukrainian border. Russia is the second-largest oil producer, trailing only the United States, and the third-leading oil exporter, behind Saudi Arabia and the United Arab [...]

The Turkish Ministry of Treasury and Finance froze the assets of over 770 individuals and organizations Friday on the grounds that they were providing terrorist financing, according to a ruling published in Turkey’s official gazette—Resmî Gazete. Among the individuals sanctioned were 454 members of what the Turkish government calls FETO, the Fethullah Terrorist Organization or [...]

A new Committee to Protect Journalist (CPJ) report released Thursday finds the number of journalists who are behind bars worldwide reached a global high in 2021. CPJ finds 293 reporters were imprisoned, at least 24 journalists were killed as a result of their work, and another 18 died under mysterious circumstances as of December 1 [...]

Turkish prosecutors ordered the arrests of 532 suspects with connections to a Muslim cleric allegedly behind a 2016 attempted coup, according to a report on Monday by state-owned Anadolu news agency. These 532 suspects include 459 on-duty military personnel. In 2016 there was a failed coup attempt by rogue soldiers to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government. This [...]