Police rounded up 7 teachers in Turkey’s western province of Bursa after a raid against a central bookstore in the city on Monday. Detainees included an accountant and two bookstore personnel. 10 suspects were detained as part of a post-coup witch hunt campaign targeting faith-based civic group, the Gülen movement.
Police carried out the operation on the intelligence of a scheduled meeting among alleged Gülen followers. The suspects are accused of having used ByLock, a publicly available messenger program that Turkish authorities claimed used by coup plotters.
Meanwhile, Bedi Özbay, an urology specialist at Yalova State Hospital until he was dismissed on Nov.22, 2016, has been sacked from his position again in a recent government decree. Özbay’s name appeared in the list of those dismissed from public payroll in both government decree, No 677 and No 689. The first decree was published on Nov.22, 2016 while the latter was released only on Apr. 29, 2017.
More than 130,000 people have lost their jobs as part of the government’s post-coup crackdown. In addition, over 50,000 were put under arrest in the aftermath of the July 15, 2016 coup attempt.
“Specialist doctor Bedi Özbay was dismissed in government decree No.677 on Nov. 22. It didn’t seem enough as he was dismissed once, one more time with the decree No 689 today. What a murky order, they have yet to find vent,” the main opposition Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP) deputy Sezgin Tanrikulu tweeted on Apr 29.
ACADEMIC SPIES ON COLLEAGUES TO SECURE POST AT UNIVERSITY
On the other part of Turkey, an assistant professor at the Çukurova University’s Public Law Department, Serdar Korucu, has reportedly spied on his colleagues to secure his position at the Adana-based university.
According to a report by Cumhuriyet daily, Korucu filed a complaint with a local prosecutor against Associated Professor Günal Kurşun, a board member at the same department and Hakan Mertcan, an academic at Mersin University who, according to Korucu, has been trying to replace him at Çukurova University in August 2016.
While Korucu accused Kurşun of having links to the Gülen movement, which the government put the blame on for the July 15 coup attempt, he claimed that Mertcan has ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). While the prosecutor ruled lack of grounds for legal action against Mertcan, an investigation was launched against Kurşun on Korucu’s complaint.
A law professor at Çukurova University, Günal Kurşun, who is former president of Human Rights Agenda Association (HRAA),also wrote columns for Today’s Zaman daily on human rights issues in Turkey before the paper was seized and later shut down by the autocratic Erdoğan regime.
Cumhuriyet daily wrote Korucu had filed another complaint against Mertcan in 2015, accusing him having ties to the Alevi groups. The prosecutor transferred his complaint to the Higher Education Council (YÖK) which later initiated no investigation into Mertcan. Meanwhile, Mertcan was ultimately dismissed from his post in a post-coup government decree on Apr 29. (SCF with turkeypurge.com) May 2, 2017
