Dundar: Erdogan’s regime intends to release criminals and keep journalists and opponents in prison

 Former Editor-in-Chief of the Turkish Cumhuriyet newspaper Jan Dundar affirmed that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is taking advantage of the law to release prisoners following an outbreak of the Coronavirus in the country to achieve his own political goals

The Turkish Zaman newspaper quoted Dundar as saying in an article on Saturday that “this law will keep in prison many journalists, politicians, activists and ordinary citizens who entered the prison just for criticizing the government, whereas under this law, prisoners imprisoned for serious crimes will be released

Dundar, who is currently in exile in Germany, stated that Erdogan is diverting the attention of public opinion in Turkey from his government’s failed battle against the Coronavirus by reducing the number of people in prison under the pretext of protecting them from the great danger that the virus could pose on the prisoners.

The British Guardian newspaper published an article last week confirming that Erdogan intends to exclude his opponents, journalists, opponent media figures and human rights activists from being released at a time when the novel Coronavirus is spreading in the country amid the aggravation of the state of public anger and criticism of Erdogan because of the deteriorating conditions inside Turkish prisons, which will become worse due to the outbreak of this pandemic.

The government of the Turkish regime threatened famous social media websites to take measures against them to prevent them from publishing unwanted information and to hide the facts from the Turkish people.

The Turkish Zaman newspaper reported that Erdogan’s government has prepared a draft law to restrict social media websites, which is scheduled to be presented to the Parliament next week, noting that the law requires those sites to appoint representatives to cooperate with Erdogan’s authorities to address concerns related to what is published on their websites such as Twitter and Facebook, which millions of Turks have access to.In case that these sites do not respond to requests within 72 hours, according to the newspaper, they will be fined $ 148,000, and representatives of companies who do not collect deleted or prohibited content or who do not store data within Turkey will be fined about 5 million TL.

Last week, Leader of the Turkish Republican People’s Party Kemal Clicdaroglu renewed his criticism of Erdogan’s political behavior and his attitudes towards his critics who objected his policies through social media, saying: “Erdogan has proven through his actions and political behavior that he is an enemy of democracy, freedom of the press and expression of opinion and that he does not bear any criticism directed to him by his opponents, whatever their political and social tendencies were.

Inas Abdulkareem