Turkey editor, NGO staff held on ‘terror’ charge ahead of NATO summit

ISTANBUL – The editor-in-chief of a Turkish LGBTQ journal and 42 other environmental volunteers were among 103 people jailed pending trial by a Turkish court on terror-related charges, a rights NGO said on June 26.

They were detained early on June 23 during a string of anti-terror police raids two weeks before the July 7 to July 8 summit in the capital Ankara that will be attended by 32 heads of state, including US President Donald Trump.

Legal rights organisation MLSA said 225 people were arrested, including journalists, academics, lawyers, trade unionists, teachers, students and civil society representatives.

Of that number, 103 were remanded in custody for “membership in a terrorist organisation”, with another 26 granted conditional release, it said.

In requesting their arrest, prosecutors argued that the suspects “may carry out terrorist acts in an effort to make Turkey appear as a country known for terrorism”.

Among those placed in pre-trial detention was Yildiz Tar, editor-in-chief of LGBTQ journal Kaos GL, Ankara University academic Emel Memis, Nevzat Ozer of the TEMA Foundation, a leading Turkish environmental NGO, along with 42 of its volunteers “between the ages of 50 and 80”, MLSA said.

Prosecutors said of the 241 people wanted for arrest, 185 were identified as belonging to far-left organisations, while another 56 were suspected of Islamic State (IS) group ties.

During the raids, one IS suspect was shot dead in a confrontation with police, with his wife, also a suspect, injured, security sources told Turkish media.

When questioned by police the environmental volunteers “were asked whether they were members of the banned Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist (TKP/ML), whether they used code names, and whether they had received armed training,” MLSA said.

And on questioning the journalist Tar, they appeared more interested in his stance on Erdogan’s “Year of the Family” initiative emphasising traditional family values, it said.

“During police questioning, Tar was not asked about NATO. Instead, investigators questioned why he had shared an interview criticising the Turkish government’s ‘Year of the Family’,” it said.

Turkey’s LGBTQ community has been frequently targeted by the authorities, with Erdogan himself lashing the community as a “deviant movement” of “perverts”.

In his defence, Tar said he had written on the subject many times in articles that sought “to defend the fundamental rights and freedoms of the LGBTQ+ community”, saying he was exercising his “right to freedom of expression through criticism”.

Erol Onderoglu of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) denounced Tar’s arrest as “unacceptable” and demanded his release, saying the summit was no justification for his “arbitrary” detention on security grounds.

Human Rights Watch has denounced the arrests, saying: “The misuse of terrorism laws to conduct mass arrests and silence people in the run-up to a NATO summit flies in the face of the founding values of the alliance”. AFP