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Southeast Europe
June 16, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 15
150,000 sacked or suspended from their jobs in purges that have taken place in the aftermath of the derailed attempt at overthrowing the govern- ment. According to the Turkish journalists union, some 160 journalists are among the imprisoned, while 130 media outlets have been shut down.
“Erdogan is waving his fingers at everyone who is against him,” Nuran, a retired teacher who de- clined to give her surname, told Reuters as the march set off. “The arrest was made to send a message but we are not afraid. We will resist until they jail every single one of us.”
Kilicdaroglu has the unenviable task of attempting to unite Turkey’s fragmented opposition forces, a difficult job given the deep ideological differences among Turkey’s left. He has in the past tried to secure support from nationalist and right-wing leaders, only to find such a strategy alienated CHP’s natural allies, the leftists.
Berberoglu, a former editor-in-chief of Hurriyet newspaper, is the first CHP MP to be imprisoned
since parliament lifted lawmakers’ immunity in 2016. He was only arrested after sentencing, following which the CHP said that the detention and imprisonment was clearly aimed at scaring the opposition. Several members of the pro- Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) have already been imprisoned on terror-related charges since last year’s botched putsch.
Berberoglu was accused of leaking a video to opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet purportedly showing Turkey’s intelligence service (MIT) help- ing to send weapons and ammunition to Syria on trucks. In the same case, Can Dundar, editor-in- chief of Cumhuriyet, was sentenced to six years in prison in absentia last year for revealing state secrets. Dundar currently resides in Germany.
Erdogan, who said he was outraged by the pub- lishing of images from the video, said at the time that the trucks were only carrying humanitarian aid destined for Turkmen groups in northern Syria and that those who published the pictures would pay a heavy price.
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