The Federal Government of Nigeria is demanding an explanation and immediate resolution following the deportation of almost 50 Nigerian students at the Ataturk Airport in Turkey. Just after the coup, the Turkish Government had requested that 17 Turkish schools be closed down for their ties to the Gulen Movement and the Nigerian Government didn’t accept it.
Turkey’s relations with African countries have been strained following demands by the Turkish government to close Gulenist schools in Sudan, Nigeria, and Somalia. After the attempted coup in Turkey on July 15, which the Turkish government has accused Gulen of masterminding, Turkey’s ambassador to Nigeria called for 17 Gulenist schools in the country to be closed.
A Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy has said there will be no investigations into claims of torture and mistreatment of people put into prison after a July 15 coup attempt if those victims are sympathizers of Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.
The 2nd Criminal Court in the southern province of Hatay rejected an indictment prepared about the Fethullah Gülen Terrorist Organization (FETÖ), a term used by the Turkish government to describe the Gülen movement, saying that there is no such a terrorist organization officially identified.
Responding to allegations from Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who accused US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara of being a sympathizer of the faith-based Gülen movement, Bharara said he has just learned Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen’s name from Google and has never been to Turkey.
A religious culture and moral knowledge teacher at a Turkish primary school has asked students about their preference between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, parents complain. Evrensel daily quoted parents as saying that students aging between 9 to 10, become cold of religious culture courses and prefer not to attend in classes amid similar incidents.
Another woman, a former Turkish journalist before the government shut down papers that spoke out against it, said: “I feel like my voice has been taken. People don’t feel safe in London, even going shopping, because we don’t know what radicals will do.”
At separate meetings between President Obama, US Vice president Biden and President Erdogan of Turkey, the American justice system has technically made it very difficult and imposable for the unlawful demands of Erdogan to be met. However, the options available to Erdogan are number one, to propose and sponsor amendments at the US parliament, number two, is to provide evidences to his claims against Gulen.
Following President Erdoğan’s statement that no country is safe for Gülen movement sympathizers, the pro-AKP media targeted exiled journalists in the US and Europe on Monday. Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization has been tasked with locating, arresting and even killing military officers who fled Turkey after allegedly taking part in a failed coup attempt in July, according a story in the Vatan daily on Aug. 30.
The vastness and persistence of the purge of the civil service, arrests of journalists, and closure of media outlets—many seemingly having nothing whatsoever to do with the exiled Turkish preacher Fethullah Gülen or his Gülenist movement that the Turkish government blames for the coup attempt.
The government is yet to renovate that place, preserving the area for foreign delegations as a showcase for the savagery of putschist soldiers. Ankara makes sure that every visiting foreign official is making their pilgrimage to the site, through dust and scattered rocks, so that they see firsthand how the mutineering soldiers attacked the Turkish democracy.