A review of a confidential Turkish military document reveals how the first group of more than 7,000 people who were taken into custody within 72 hours of a failed coup in Turkey on July 15, 2016 were flagged for detention and imprisonment long before.
Nordic Monitor obtained a list of individuals who were detained countrywide within three days of the abortive putsch that indicates thousands of members of the judiciary and other officers of the court had been profiled before the July 15 events and detained without any credible evidence linking them to the failed coup. The scale of detentions and arrests immediately after the incident reinforces the widespread criticism that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has used the coup attempt as a pretext to clamp down on dissent and jail several hundred thousand critics on charges of alleged terrorism, while tens of thousands of civil servants have been dismissed from their jobs by presidential decrees.
Consisting of 7,023 suspects, the list prepared by the General Staff is apparently a compilation of internal memos and detention reports sent by the police between July 15 and 18, 2016. Many typos and the absence of some essential information — seven persons were recorded without any surnames, 205 without any profession or place of detention and 123 without a date of detention — gives the impression that it was created haphazardly, most likely for the purpose of immediate submission to a higher authority.
The list comprises every detainee’s first name, surname, profession, name of the relevant detention center and the city in which it is located, and the date and status of the detainee at the time.
Of the 6,818 suspects whose professions were identified, 5,808 were military personnel including cadets, 94 were police officers, mostly chiefs, and 917 were civilians. (nordicmonitor.com)
