Turkey's treatment of its citizens is notorious the world over. Yet it remains the darling of European allies, hailed as a modernising country and an example to other Muslim nations. IHRC and several other organisations are deeply concerned at the continuing human rights abuses perpetrated by Turkey's various military, pseudo-military and military imposed regimes against the ordinary people of Turkey. IHRC is campaigning for two specific prisoners of faith, as well as other cases of human rights violations. Please see the links at the end of the page for more information and links on Turkey, human rights and its treatment of Muslims and Islam.

AP

12-DEC-97

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) The Turkish military has dismissed 62 officers in a bid to rid the army of suspected Islamic militants and other extremists, news reports said Friday.

The high military council expelled 55 officers in a purge of alleged anti-secularists. The rest were suspected of having links to criminal gangs, the daily Hurriyet reported.

Some 210 other officers have been discharged by the council for similar reasons this year. The council says the officers are expelled for "disciplinary" reasons.

The military, which has staged three coups since the 1960's, has asserted itself as the guarantor of Turkey's secular traditions in this predominantly Muslim country.

An Islamic-led government resigned in June under pressure from the military, which was angered by its efforts to raise the profile of Islam.

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Wednesday, 13 Jumad-al-Thani 1418(ah) - 15 October 1997(ce) -----------------------------------------------------------

Forwarded from BICNews

Turk court jails former Islamist mayor for protest

Turk court jails former Islamist mayor for protest

ANKARA, Oct 15 (Reuters) - A Turkish court on Wednesday jailed a former Islamist mayor for more than four years for calling for the implementation of Islamic law at an anti-Israeli protest he organised.

Ankara state security court found Bekir Yildiz guilty for ``aiding and betting an armed gang'' and ``provoking hatred and animosity among people by showing differences of region, class, religion or race.''

Yildiz, a member of the Islam-based Welfare Party, was sentenced a total of four years and seven months in prison. Court officials did not say which armed gang he abetted.

At the same trial, Nurettin Sirin, editor of the small Islamic daily Selam, was sentenced to 17-and-a-half years in jail for being a member of the armed Turkish Hizbullah group.

Yildiz was charged in February after organising a protest night in Ankara's Sincan district in which he and Iran's ambassador spoke on a stage draped with a banner of the late leader of the Palestinian group, Islamic Jihad.

Turkish media and secularists at the time accused Yildiz of making a speech in favour of turning officially secular Turkey into an Islamic state.

He was later removed from his post. Yildiz denied the charges during the trial proceedings.

The event, known as ``Jerusalem Night,'' was a bone of contention between the secularist establishment and the then government of Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan.

Tanks toured Sincan several days after the protest in a warning to the Islamists.

Erbakan resigned in June after a row with the army over an alleged religious upsurge in the public life.

Copyright 1997 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

07-OCT-97

ISTANBUL, Oct 7 (Reuter) - Around 300 Turkish female students staged a sit-down demonstration on Tuesday in protest at university authorities' refusal to register them because they wore Islamic headscarves.

``We will protect our honour,'' read a banner held by headscarved students sitting at the gates of Istanbul University. ``We are victims. Our headscarves are our belief, honour and our identity. This ban is against our right to education and human rights,'' said protester Sehma Dovucu. The students said they would protest every day until the ban was lifted.

Some of the university faculties have refused to register hundreds of female students who handed in university identity cards with photographs of themselves wearing Islamic headscarves. Similar restrictions have been enforced at universities in the capital Ankara and in the western city of Bursa. The Islamist students have been unable to attend classes, which in most Turkish universities began last week.

Hundreds of Islamists have staged regular protests after Friday prayers against secular school reforms passed by parliament in August.