Human Rights Watch criticizes Turkish authorities in new report

ISTANBUL

REUTERS photo

Human Rights Watch (HRW) released on Jan. 12 a report claiming that the Turkish government used last year’s foiled military coup to launch an “expansive crackdown that swept up peaceful critics and undermined democracy.” 

The report said that the July 15, 2016, coup attempt in the country could not be an excuse for “the scale of the clampdown against critics and opponents that followed.”

HRW’s Europe and Central Asia director, Hugh Williamson, said that “with hundreds of thousands of people dismissed or detained without due process, an independent media silenced and Kurdish opposition members of parliament in jail, Turkey has been plunged into its worst crisis in a generation.”

A senior Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity, categorically rejected the claims.