Turkish Government Raids Judiciary, Arrests 189 Judges And Prosecutors

By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor.

Yesterday, police in Turkey served arrest warrants on one hundred, eighty nine appeals court judges and prosecutors in the latest post-coup attempt purges. Since the July, 15^th military coup, seeking the ouster of dictator Recep Erdogan, thirty-two thousand individuals are currently in jail and over one hundred thousand were sacked from their jobs under the questionable accusation of aiding dissident Fethullah Gulen.

Ankara’s chief prosecutor attacked the judiciary, members of the justice ministry, the Court of Cassation (Turkey’s top appellate court), and the Council of State (the highest administrative court).

The purges are part of seemingly never ending act of paranoia by a dictator bent on returning Turkey to authoritarianism.

 
The latest basis alleged for subversive activities of members of the judiciary and prosecutors stems from the use of the smart phone app ByLock, which the intelligence services believe is used for communications with Gulen’s followers. In fact, the suspicion is so widespread that police detained the lead prosecutor tasked with investigating allegations of coup activities in Konya after discovering he was a ByLock subscriber.

On Thursday the purges continued into the education sector with the removal of two thousand five hundred teachers and one hundred nine judges from positions within the military court system.

Turkey without doubt is descending into a very bleak period. It is not going to end well.

By Darren Smith

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