Pro-gov’t journalist suggests killing family members of jailed Gülen followers

Journalist Cem Küçük, a staunch supporter of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, suggested during a live TV program on Monday that Turkish intelligence should kill family members of jailed Gülen followers in order to turn the inmates into operatives for the Erdoğan regime.

Speaking during a live TV show along with his program partner journalist Fuat Uğur, Küçük said Israeli intelligence agency MOSSAD had killed family members of Palestinian, Jordanian and Egyptian inmates to make them MOSSAD operatives.

Suggesting that the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) adopt similar techniques to use on followers of the Gülen movement, accused by the Turkish government of being behind a failed coup last year, Küçük also gave the names of former police chief Ali Fuat Yılmazer, former general Mehmet Partigöç and former Zaman daily owner Alaaddin Kaya, who might be useful for MİT to acquire more information about the Gülen movement.

Küçük also criticized Turkish prosecutors for being soft on Gülen followers and said: “Now here [in Turkey] you feel pity for them (Gülen followers). You should think of all the ways [to get rid of them].”

He also talked about excuses about probable deaths of Gülen followers such as traffic accidents, suicides, mass suicides, death from excessive alcohol use, death from overdose, jumped off a bridge after he couldn’t take the pressure of debt and health problems.

He said Israel would kill 15-20 Gülen followers all around the world if its government was targeted by a graft probe or a coup attempt.

Turkey’s President Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) government accused Gülen movement followers, especially those in the state bureaucracy, for attempting to overthrow the government by means of a graft probe in Dececember 2013 and a failed coup attempt in July 2016.

Immediately after the putsch AKP the government along with Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement.

Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, strongly denied having any role in the failed coup and called for an international investigation into it, but President Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” — and the government initiated a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.

Amid an ongoing witch-hunt targeting the faith-based Gülen movement, Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu on Nov. 16 said 48,739 people had been jailed and eight holdings and 1,020 companies seized as part of operations against the movement.

Turkey’s Justice Ministry announced on July 13 that 50,510 people have been arrested and 169,013 have been the subject of legal proceedings on coup charges since the failed coup.

Turkey has suspended or dismissed more than 150,000 judges, teachers, police and civil servants since July 15 through government decrees issued as part of an ongoing state of emergency.

According to Ministry of Justice data, there are currently 384 prisons with a capacity of 207,279 in Turkey; however, the total number of inmates was 228,983 as of October 2017.

The Turkish Ministry of Justice plans to build 228 new prisons with a capacity of 137,687 in the next five years.

Published on Turkish Minute, 12 December 2017, Tuesday