Ignoring human rights organization’s plea
to not turn three Turkish nationals over to Turkey where they will be
subjected to torture and abuse, Malaysian government deported all three
critics of Turkey’s autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Turkey
on May 11, 2017.
Malaysia Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar
confirmed school principal Turgay Karaman, academic İsmet Özcelik and
businessman İhsan Arslan were deported to Turkey.
Stockholm Center for Freedom (SCF), Amnesty International (AI), Human
Rights Watch (HRW) and UN Human Rights Office for South-East Asia have
called on Malaysian officials to refrain from extradition as the
detainees who are affiliated with the Gülen movement, which the
government has launched a sweeping witch hunt campaign against, will
face inhuman treatment, abuse and torture in Turkey.
Yet, Malaysian officials ignored these pleas and handed these three
men over to Turkey as they did on the case of two Turkish nationals,
Alettin Duman (45), one of founders of Time International School, and
Tamer Tıbık (43), the General Secretary of the Malaysian Turkish Chamber
Of Commerce And Industry, — also Turkish nationals and believed to be
affiliated with the movement. SCF received reports from family members
of both Duman and Tıbık confirming that both men endured torture and
abuse in Turkish prisons after deported to Turkey in what appears to be
unlawful extradition.
Amnesty International stated in its ‘urgent action’ call that “there
is credible evidence of arbitrary detention and torture of detainees
suspected of belonging to the Gülen movement, which Amnesty
International and other human rights organizations have documented. If
the three men are suspected to be linked to the Gülen movement, Amnesty
International fears the two men will be at risk of being extradited to
Turkey where they would risk similar ill-treatment.”
Turgay Karaman, the principal of Time International School (Ipoh),
was reported to have been kidnapped on May 2, 2017, by five unknown
people at the parking lot of Wisma E & C, a 16-story high-rise
building where he came to attend for a meeting. The CCTV camera footages
showed he was taken away after he exited from his car at the Basement
No.5 of the building. Karaman was scheduled to offer his testimony as a
defense witness in a trial hearing of the criminal case that was to be
held on May 3rd.
His friends filed a missing person report with the police when they
could not reach him on the phone after Karaman did not show up for a
meeting at the lawyers’ office in the afternoon of May 2. They later
found that his Toyota brand car was abandoned in a parking lot. The
United Nation’s office in Kuala Lumpur was also alerted about possible
abduction of a foreign national in Malaysia by clandestine groups
operating on behalf of Turkish government.
Another Turkish national named İhsan Arslan, 39 years old
businessman, was reported missing by his wife who reported to the police
that she has been unable to reach to her husband since 8 pm on May 1,
2017. Arslan, married to Malaysian national, is a member of Malaysian
Turkish Chamber Of Commerce And Industry, a business advocacy group that
is affiliated with Gülen movement which is major critic of Turkey’s
autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on corruption and Turkey’s
arming and funding of Jihadist groups including Islamic State of Iraq
and Levant (ISIL or Daesh).
Although the police could not immediately locate their whereabouts,
when the news of their abduction became a breaking story on
international media, Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar said
in a tweet On May 3 that both Karaman and Arslan were arrested in
connection with activities that threatened national security. He said
they were arrested under Section 130 of the Penal Code. It is reported
that Karaman and Arslan were detained under the Security Offenses
(Special Measures) Act 2012 (Sosma) – which allows for detention of
suspects without trial.
İsmet Özçelik (58), a Turkish academic who has been in Malaysia and
waiting for the resettlement by the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR), was also detained by the police on May 4, 2017.
His detention appears to have been instigated upon a request by
Turkish government that has jailed almost 50,000 people in the last
eight months alone on trumped-up charges to crack down on opponents and
dissidents of Erdoğan’s authoritarian regime. The United Nations, the
Council of Europe (CoE) as well the non-governmental organizations have
all criticized Turkish government for mass purges, detentions, abusing
criminal justice system and silencing critical and independent media.
On Dec.13, 2016, İsmet Özçelik faced an attempted abduction from the
home of his son in Kuala Lumpur when unidentified gunmen, appeared to be
linked to security services of Malaysia, showed at the door at the
request of Turkish security services that wanted to whisk away to
Turkey. Police called in on the scene when his family and lawyers
intervened with the attempted abduction that halted his extraordinary
rendition. He was kept in jail for 50 days before Malaysian authorities
decided to release him pending trial.
The social media accounts connected to the Turkish government hailed
the abductions of Turkish nationals, saying that Turkish intelligence
has been involved in snatching critics in Malaysia. They threatened that
other critics in foreign countries will end up in the same situation
soon as Turkish intelligence will round up Erdoğan’s critics no matter
where they are located around the world. Both Karaman and Arslan have
been legally residing in Malaysia for 13 years and they have been
involved with educational, charitable and intercultural dialogue
activities. There is nothing to suggest that they were involved in any
type of violence or terror.
President Erdoğan has persistently voiced threats to those who have
been forced to leave the country due to persecution and a witch-hunt,
vowing that he will hunt them down and kill them in a public rallies
that were broadcasted live and that were attended by tens of thousands
of his die-hard fans. The abductions of Turkish citizens from Malaysia
came against the background of Turkish President Erdoğan’s remarks which
said on September 2016 that “no country or region around the world will
ever be a safe haven for members of Gülen movement.”
Speaking at a rally in Turkey’s Black Sea province of Zonguldak on
April 4, 2017, Erdoğan said: “We are purging every Gülenist in the army,
in the police and in state institutions. And we will continue cleansing
[these organizations of] them because we will eradicate this cancer
from the body of this country and the state. They will not enjoy the
right to life… Our fight against them will continue until the end. We
won’t leave them wounded.”
The government started referring to the peaceful civic group Hizmet
(popularly known as Gülen movement) as a terrorist organization (namely,
the Gülenist Terror Group, or FETÖ), following the expose on major
corruption investigations in December 2013 that implicated Erdoğan and
his family members in billions of dollars of bribes and kickbacks.
Erdoğan started targeting Gülen and his movement openly after the
corruption was exposed, and even accused Hizmet of being behind the
failed coup of July 15 that he himself called as gift from the God.
Gülen, however, rejected the accusations and has called for an
independent international commission to be set up to investigate the
coup attempt. The Turkish government has failed to present any direct
evidence linking the cleric or the movement to the abortive coup.stockholmcf.org
May 12, 2017
