Doğan Holding Ankara representative Muratoğlu, arrested over alleged Gülen links, released

Among the charges against Barbaros Muratoğlu was his visit to US-based Turkish-Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen and taking this photograph with him as doing up two buttons on his jacket.

An İstanbul court ordered the release of Doğan Holding’s Ankara Administrative representative Barbaros Muratoğlu, who was arrested over alleged links to the Gülen movement, on Thursday on the basis of the time he has served in prison.

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Muratoğlu was arrested in December 2016 on charges of “aiding an armed terrorist organization” as a part of an investigation into the Gülen movement as a part of Turkish government’s post-coup witch hunt targeting the alleged followers of the Gülen movement which was accused of being behind the controversial July 2016 coup attempt.

Among the main reasons for the accusation of aiding a terrorist organization in the probe and his arrest were visiting US-based Turkish-Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, taking photographs with him, doing up two buttons on his jacket and making phone calls with lawyers and civil servants.

A military coup attempt on July 15 killed over 240 people. Immediately after the putsch, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with Turkey’s autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement.

Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, strongly denied having any role in the failed coup and called for an international investigation into it, but President Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” — and the government initiated a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.

At least 161,751 people were detained or investigated and 50,334 people were arrested in Turkey in the framework of the Turkish government’s massive post-coup witch hunt campaign targeting alleged members of the Gülen movement since the controversial coup attempt on July 15, 2016, according to statistics reported by state-run Anadolu news agency by basing on information taken from the officials from Turkey’s Justice Minsitry on June 13.

June 15, 2017

 

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