ARBITRARY DETENTION AND ARREST
August 27: Jailed lawyer Ebru Timtik who was sentenced to more than 13 years on terror charges died after 238 days of hunger strike aimed at demanding a fair trial.
FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY
August 27: A group of people who gathered in front of the residence of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to hold a press statement in solidarity with jailed lawyers Ebru Timtik and Aytaç Ünsal were blocked and detained by the police.
August 28: The police attacked mourners gathered at an Alevi cultural center in İstanbul to pay respects to jailed lawyer Ebru Timtik who died on Thursday night after 238 days of hunger strike.
August 28: An anti-drug manifestation in Ankara was blocked by the police who briefly detained three people.
August 30: A gathering organized by main opposition CHP in Kırşehir was blocked by the police who reportedly assaulted CHP deputy Metin İlhan during the incident.
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND MEDIA
August 24: An İstanbul court rejected the request for the release of journalists Barış Pehlivan, Murat Ağırel and Hülya Kılınç; who are standing trial on espionage charges over their reporting of the death of a Turkish intelligence officer killed in Libya.
August 24: The Evrensel newspaper’s Diyarbakır correspondent Cengiz Anıl Bölükbaş was detained by three people who introduced themselves as police officers. Bölükbaş further claimed that the officers tried to convince him to become an informant for them.
August 25: The residence of Yakup Kocabaş, a local journalist based in Antalya, was attacked by an armed group.
August 25: A man named Arif Kocabıyık was briefly detained in Maraş over his social media posts for allegedly “provoking hate and enmity among public.”
August 26: A vehicle belonging to a local journalists’ association in Nevşehir was reportedly set on fire while parked in front of the association’s building.
August 26: A person identified by his/her initials H.B. was detained in Muğla for allegedly insulting Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu on social media.
August 26: Gerger Fırat, a local journalist based in Adıyaman, was arrested and sent to prison after his prison sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court of Appeals (Yargıtay).
August 27: Media reports claimed that İstanbul prosecutors drafted an indictment against journalist Can Ataklı in which they sought up to 4 years, 8 months in prison for allegedly insulting the president.
August 28: Media watchdog RTÜK imposed a fine against TELE 1 TV broadcaster for allegedly praising terrorism, over an ad for the leftist Evrensel newspaper depicting a girl holding a scarf colored red, yellow and green.
August 28: Writer Musa Dinç was detained and arrested in Aydın over a children’s book he wrote in which he allegedly told “obscene stories about bodies of children, animals and dead people.”
KURDISH MINORITY
August 24: Fatma Kavmaz, a local HDP politician in Diyarbakır was detained and arrested the next day (Aug. 25) for alleged “membership in a terrorist group.”
August 25: A report claimed that two out of Turkey’s top three cell phone carriers, Türk Telekom and Vodafone, do not offer services in any Kurdish dialects despite having millions of Kurdish-speaking clients.
August 26: A court in Muş ruled to arrest local Kurdish politician Abdulbari Yiğit.
August 27: Three members of the pro-Kurdish HDP claimed to have been briefly abducted by people who introduced themselves as intelligence operatives. The HDP members alleged that the abductors took them to a remote location where they were tortured and coerced to become informants.
August 30: One of pro-Kurdish HDP’s district headquarters in Ankara was attacked by two people. One of the alleged perpetrators were reportedly detained by the police afterwards.
PRISON CONDITIONS
August 26: Media reports claimed that female inmates in the Sincan prison in Ankara were prevented from receiving their letters and that the prisoners’ petitions were not treated properly.
August 26: Media reports claimed that a prisoner named Tenzike Acar in İstanbul was prevented from receiving treatment for Hepatitis B because she refused to undergo treatment in handcuffs.
WOMEN’S RIGHTS
August 26: A court ruled to release sergeant Musa Orhan, who was arrested on August 19 following public outrage over the death of an 18-year-old woman who committed suicide after allegedly being raped by him.