{"id":79982,"date":"2018-03-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-05T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/blog-post\/turkish-or-not-erdogans-critics-face-severe-legal-challenges\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T11:21:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T09:21:25","slug":"turkish-or-not-erdogans-critics-face-severe-legal-challenges","status":"publish","type":"blog-post","link":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/blog-post\/turkish-or-not-erdogans-critics-face-severe-legal-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkish or Not, Erdo\u011fan\u2019s Critics Face Severe Legal Challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Having long given up on the pretense of appearing acceptable to the EU, President Erdo\u011fan of Turkey is now using Interpol to crush his real or perceived enemies, in what Angela Merkel has deemed an abuse of the international policing system. Erdo\u011fan\u2019s efforts have shown that he can effectively muzzle critics on a massive scale, both at home and abroad, targeting Turkish citizens and foreigners alike.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Interpol Abuses<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Salih Muslim, a former leader of the PYD (Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party) was detained on February 25th in Prague. For Erdo\u011fan, there is now an opportunity to recreate the infamous 1999 capture and subsequent show trial of PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) leader Abdullah \u00d6calan. Should the Czech government deport Muslim to Turkey (despite his Syrian citizenship), it would be a tremendous gift of propaganda to Erdo\u011fan, as Muslim is accused of being the mastermind behind the YPG (People\u2019s Protection Units), with whom Turkey is currently at war in Northern Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Turkish-German intellectual Do\u011fan Akhanl\u0131 was similarly arrested in Spain, though unlike Salih Muslim, his crimes were never even defined. Akhanl\u0131, who had his Turkish citizenship stripped in 1998, has long been critical of the Turkish State. Like Muslim, Akhanl\u0131\u2019s extradition to Turkey would have given Turkey a figurehead with which it could propagate the image that it is crushing its enemies. Akhanl\u0131 was released last October after receiving strong statements of support from the German government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Little Lawrences<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More recently, Deniz Y\u00fccel was released on February 17, after a year in Turkish prison. While Y\u00fccel was freed, three journalists were given lifetime sentences; most disconcertingly, one of the sentenced had previously been slated for release the following day, in a testimony to the arbitrary nature of justice in Erdo\u011fan\u2019s Turkey. Then there is the case of Peter Steudtner, another German national. In July 2017, Steudtner was arrested on suspicious terror charges along with nine other human rights advocates in what was a widespread crackdown on activist journalists in Turkey. That Steudtner is not Turkish, likely played on the growing sentiment that foreigners are against the Turkish state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Erdo\u011fan has never been one to shy away from using xenophobia as a means to rally support at home. Consider the case of Dutch journalist Fr\u00e9derike Geerdink, one of the world\u2019s foremost Kurdish experts, and a longtime resident of Turkey\u2019s Kurdish region. Geerdink was expelled from Turkey on September 15, 2015, on legally dubious charges. In describing foreign Kurdish experts, Erdo\u011fan uses faux-anti-colonial rhetoric aimed to foster sympathy from Western European leftists. He brands them as modern day \u00abvoluntary Lawrences of Arabia, disguised as journalists, religious men, writers and terrorists\u00bb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A Climate of Fear<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Switzerland, two cases have created an atmosphere of insecurity within the Turkish community: In May 2017, three Kurds originating from Basel were arrested in Turkey on questionable charges, with only one of them having participated in demonstrations against Erdo\u011fan in Switzerland. It was revealed that a police officer from Basel who happened to be an ardent supporter of Erdo\u011fan had passed on police intelligence about Swiss critics to Turkish authorities. It is unclear if and how these cases are linked.<br>There is no return to normality with Erdo\u011fan. Every policy maker dealing with Turkey should bear in mind how it treats its critics. The world needs to take clear steps to secure the safety of those critical to the Turkish government, be they Turks or foreigners. It is also important to note that while Turks living in the EU have European governments to support them, Turks without a second citizenship have no such luxury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":68605,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"archive-status":[],"region":[],"custom-themes":[],"class_list":["post-79982","blog-post","type-blog-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog-post\/79982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog-post"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/blog-post"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"archive-status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archive-status?post=79982"},{"taxonomy":"region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region?post=79982"},{"taxonomy":"custom-themes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom-themes?post=79982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}