49-member team to report to Turkey’s Erdoğan on Gülen-linked trials

The president of Turkey’s Constitutional Court (AYM), Zühtü Arslan, has been criticized on social media for bowing to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at a Victory Day reception on Aug. 30, 2017 and evaluated as the lack of independence of the Turkish judiciary.

A group of 49 people, nine experts from Turkey’s State Inspection Council (DDK) and 40 key advisers of Turkey’s autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, will closely monitor trials concerning the Gülen movement and submit reports to the president, the Hürriyet Daily News said on Wednesday.

According to the report, the DDK members and Erdoğan’s key legal advisers, including Mustafa Akış, Ahmet Karayiğit, Mehmet Uçum, Ayşe Türkmenoğlu and Özlem Zengin, will monitor trials and report their analyses on a daily or weekly basis to the president.

The nine-member DDK committee, headed by its president, Yunus Arıncı, has been in the process of preparing a report on followers of the Gülen movement, which is accused by Turkish authorities of being behind a failed coup last year.

According to the HDN, the DDK will compare its report on the Gülen movement’s alleged political and financial operations with the testimony of suspects in trials concerning the coup attempt.

In the wake of last year’s attempted coup, over 146,000 people, including many in the armed forces, police and judiciary as well as the education and business sectors, were fired from state jobs. Nearly 125,000 were detained and more than 58,000 arrested over alleged links to the movement.

The movement and US-based Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, whose views inspired the movement, strongly deny any involvement in the attempted coup. (turkishminute.com)

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