Turkey set to release 38,000 prisoners as 2,360 police officers dismissed
In a decree issued on Wednesday by the Official Gazette on the Republic of Turkey, Turkey is conditionally releasing 38,000 prisoners taken into custody following a failed coup d’état. The mass release is in order to make room for the tens of thousands of new detainees as the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues its post-coup campaign. Some 2,360 police officers and military personnel are also facing dismissal.
The decrees come one day after Turkish authorities raided businesses and issued arrest warrants for those suspected of providing financial assistance to Fethullah Gulen, the Muslim cleric living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania whom Erdogan accuses of being the mastermind of the attempted coup.
“I think Turkey’s sweeping campaign to arrest suspected ‘Gulenists’ in the military and state institutions has so filled up Turkey’s [penal] institutions that the 38,000 released were to make space for the new detainees,” Fadi Hakura, Associate Fellow of the Europe Program at Chatham House told The Media Line. “There were reports that the prisons were so filled up that officials had to put detainees in school gyms and other facilities.” He said the estimate of those detained or dismissed from their jobs exceeds 80,000.
The purge has also led to at least 35,000 arrests and the forced removal of 1,577 university deans.
Gulen, who has thousands of followers, has denied any role in the coup.
According to a tweet by Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ, only those who committed crimes before July 1st, 2016, and who have two years or less of a prison sentence remaining, and have exhibited good behavior are eligible for release. Those ineligible include prisoners who committed deliberate killings, sexual abuse crimes, drug trafficking, crimes against the state, and acts of terrorism. The release is not amnesty, Bozdağ tweeted. Prisoners will be on probation upon release.
Turkey, which has been on a crusade to wipe out all followers of Gulen, has issued another decree dismissing 2,360 police officers, military personnel and members of the state’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority for having ties to the exiled cleric. The government also shut down TIB, the Department of Telecommunications and Communications and the president now has the ability to appoint the head of the armed forces.
Not surprisingly, tension continues to run high in the affected sectors. One Turkish journalist The Media Line asked for his assessment of the situation responded by saying, “My newspaper was seized a couple of months ago and is now closed down and my position is not clear yet and answering your questions might put myself in a risky situation.”
Turkey is visibly running out of patience with the United States’ failure to act favorably and quickly on its requests to return Gulen. Extradition has not been granted despite the delivery of some 85 boxes of evidence to the US that Ankara claims links Gulen to the coup.
“It is something that the Turkish government is demanding in a very determined fashion,” Mr. Kemal Kirişci, TÜSİAD senior fellow and director of the Center of the United States and Europe’s Turkey Project at the Brookings Institute told The Media Line. “The US government is insisting that the evidence should withstand scrutiny in a court of law.”
The extradition process is governed by an agreement signed in 1979.
“It looks like the US is skeptical that Turkey can provide sufficient enough evidence. The likelihood of expedited extradition is very unlikely,” Hakura added.
Turkish prosecutors are seeking two life sentences plus 1,900 years in prison for Gulen.
Katie Beiter is a student-journalism intern at The Media Line.