Local ‘Amnesty’ chief Kilic jailed

French scribe freed

ANKARA, June 10, (Agencies): Turkish authorities jailed the local chairman of Amnesty International pending trial over charges of “membership of a terrorist organisation”, as part a crackdown following last July’s failed coup attempt, the rights group said.

Taner Kilic, along with 22 other lawyers in the Aegean coastal province of Izmir, was detained on Tuesday for suspected links to the network of Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara blames for last year’s failed coup.

“The Turkish prosecution’s decision to charge Taner Kilic ... with ‘membership of a terrorist organisation’ is a mockery of justice, and highlights the devastating impact of the Turkish authorities’ crackdown following the failed coup attempt in July last year,” Amnesty said in a statement on Friday.

It said he was being charged with using ByLock, an encrypted messaging app the government says was used by Gulen’s followers, but Amnesty said he had denied using the app in his testimony.

Salil Shetty, head of Amnesty International, said the charges were without merit and not an indication of a criminal act, while the arrests were a disregard of human rights and an attempt to silence all those who defend them.

“The charges ... show just how arbitrary, just how sweeping, the Turkish government’s frenzied pursuit of its perceived enemies and critics has become,” Shetty said. He demanded his immediate release with all charges against him dropped.

Gulen

Remanded

Amnesty also said eight of the 22 lawyers had been remanded in custody, six remained in detention and seven were awaiting court rulings. Only one had been released, it said.

Since the July coup attempt, authorities have arrested 50,000 people and sacked or suspended 150,000, including soldiers, police, teachers and public servants, over alleged links with terrorist groups, including Gulen’s network which Ankara deems a terrorist organisation.

Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, has denied involvement in the coup and condemned it.

The scope of the purges, which have also seen more than 130 media outlets shut down and some 150 journalists jailed, has unnerved rights groups and Turkey’s Western allies, who say President Tayyip Erdogan is using the coup as a pretext to muzzle dissent and purge opponents.

Turkish authorities were not immediately available for comment, but officials have said the crackdown is necessary due to the gravity of the coup attempt, in which 240 people were killed on July 15.

French photographer freed:

French photojournalist Mathias Depardon, who was held for a month in Turkey, said on his return to France Friday night that Ankara wanted to send a “strong message” to reporters wishing to go to the southeast of the country.

Depardon, who was detained near the Syrian border while on assignment for National Geographic magazine, said he was “happy to be in Paris, to be in France” as he was met by government officials at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport. “I’m fine,” the 37-yearold told reporters, smiling but visibly tired.

Depardon said he was accused of terrorist propaganda and supporting terrorist groups, namely the Kurdish separatist PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), over some photographs he had taken in recent years.

“I think the idea was to send a strong message to foreign and Turkish journalists who are intending to cover news in southeast Turkey,” he said.

The southeast has been battered by renewed fighting between Kurdish rebels and Turkish security forces since a fragile truce collapsed in 2015.

Depardon said he had very little contact with other detainees and did not know long he was going to be held. “I knew that legally I could be detained up to a year,” he said.

The photographer was deported a day after receiving a visit from his mother for the first time at the detention centre in Gaziantep.

President Emmanuel Macron had announced Depardon’s arrival on Twitter after asking his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan last weekend to ensure the journalist’s return to France “as soon as possible.”

Macron had welcomed his release, saying in a statement: “France is committed to freedom of the press and the protection of journalists everywhere.”

Detained

Depardon was detained on May 8 while on assignment in Hasankeyf in Turkey’s southeastern Batman province. He went on hunger strike two weeks after his detention, stopping almost a week later when he learned that a consular visit would be allowed.

Depardon was accused of working without a press card, which was in the process of being renewed.

He was also detained over “propaganda for a terror group” — a reference to outlawed Kurdish militants — which could lead to a judicial investigation, according to Turkish authorities.

1 killed, 4 hurt in gunfire:

Two suspected Kurdish rebels on Friday opened fire on a car belonging to a local mayor, then blew up their vehicle near a military police station in southeast Turkey, officials said.

One person was killed and four people were wounded in the attacks and one of the assailants was killed, officials said.

The governor’s office in the mainly Kurdish province of Batman said the attackers missed the vehicle of the mayor of Kozluk, but hit another car, killing a teacher and slightly wounding another passenger.

The assailants then drove their stolen car toward a military police station and detonated a car bomb at a nearby roadblock, injuring two soldiers and a civilian, the governor’s office said. One of the attackers also was killed.

In a related incident, suspected Kurdish militants fired rockets at a military helicopter in Hakkari province, near the border with Iraq, forcing the Sikorsky to make an emergency landing, Turkey’s military said. No one was hurt in the attack.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has waged a three-decade long insurgency in southeast Turkey. Tens of thousands were killed in the conflict.