Outrage as Amnesty activists are held in Turkey
TURKISH police have detained 12 people, including the local director of Amnesty International and other rights activists, at a meeting near Istanbul, in a move the rights group said was a “grotesque abuse of power”.
The detentions came less than a month after a court jailed, pending trial, Taner Kilic, the chairman of Amnesty’s Turkey branch, on charges of “membership of a terrorist organisation” after an attempted coup in July 2016.
Idil Eser, Amnesty’s Turkey director, and the others were taken to a police station on Wednesday evening after gathering at an hotel on Buyukada, an island south of Turkey’s largest city, the Hurriyet newspaper said. It was not clear why they were being held. Amnesty called for the group’s release, saying it was “profoundly disturbed and outraged” at the detentions during a digital security and information management workshop.
Among those detained with Ms Eser were seven human rights defenders, two foreign trainers – a German and a Swedish national – and the hotel owner, their statement said. Salil Shetty, Amnesty’s secretary general, added: “This is a grotesque abuse of power and highlights the precarious situation facing human rights activists in the country.”
Since the failed putsch, Turkey has jailed more than 50,000 people pending trial and suspended or dismissed some 150,000, including soldiers, police, teachers and public servants.
The purge has led to the closure of 130 media outlets and jailing of 150 journalists, and has worried Turkey’s Western allies and rights groups, who say President Tayyip Erdogan is using the coup as a pretext to muzzle dissent.
Johannes Hahn, the EU enlargement commissioner who is visiting Turkey to discuss its accession progress, said the detentions would form part of his discussions in Ankara.