Novelist Erdoğan says Turkey turned into a ‘concentration camp’

Renowned Turkish novelist Aslı Erdoğan.

Aslı Erdoğan, an internationally acclaimed Turkish author and a famous human right activist,  has said she sees parallels between today’s Turkey and Germany under the Nazi rule and added that the country was turned into a concentration camp in the face of post-coup arrest waves.

Speaking to the German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA), Erdoğan said Turkey has been driving at full speed to an extremely totalitarian one-party regime. “Now, Turkey has turned into a concentration camp,” said Erdoğan and added that the judiciary system got so bad that people do not know when and why they are imprisoned, nor when and when they get out again. “Soon we will be arrested for half sentences, half an exclamation point, half a comma. Believe me, I have not experienced a worse time,” she continued.

Author of many books including those translated into many other foreign languages, Aslı Erdoğan also spent nearly four months in prison over terror charges between August and December of last year. She was released on judicial control. Aslı Erdoğan was awarded freedom of opinion and thought prize by the Association of Turkish Publishers, on Tuesday.

Turkey has detained more than 120,000 people as part of its alleged terror operations since the July 15, 2016 coup attempt.

Turkey is also the leading jailer of journalists in the world. The Stockholm Center for Freedom (SCF) has documented that 264 journalists are now in jails as of May 27, most in pre-trial detention languishing in notorious Turkish prisons without even a conviction. Of those in Turkish prisons, 241 are arrested pending trial, only 23 journalists remain convicted and serving time in Turkish prisons. An outstanding detention warrants remain for 105 journalists who live in exile or remain at large in Turkey.

Detaining tens of thousands of people over alleged links to the movement, the government also closed down more than 180 media outlets after the coup attempt. (SCF with turkeypurge.com) May 27, 2017

Take a second to support Stockholm Center for Freedom on Patreon!
Become a patron at Patreon!