Professor Cihangir İslam, who is among over 7,000 academics fired from their jobs in Turkey in a post-coup purge, said the people who have been purged are being held in a post-modern concentration camp.
İslam said on minor TV channel KRT over the weekend that the purge aims to eliminate some people in the country.
“There is a group of over 100,000 people who have been dismissed, whose passports were revoked, whose incomes were taken away,” İslam said, adding that he personally has witnessed the sufferings of some of these families.
“I call these people a group that has been taken into a post-modern concentration camp,” said İslam, who was also stripped of all his rights as a result of the latest state of emergency decree issued on Feb. 7.
Turkey has been pursuing a massive purge since a failed coup on July 15 against critics on allegations of coup plotting and terrorist links.
İslam is married to former deputy Merve Kavakçı, who had been barred from Parliament in 1999 for entering the General Assembly in a headscarf during the oppressive secular era of the country. Although a victim of oppression herself, Kavakçı has lent support to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s witch-hunt against sympathizers of the Gülen movement since 2013.
Professor İslam also said in the same TV appearance said that preventing freedom of expression is a tradition of oppressors such as pharaohs, calling the actions of the current Justice and Development Party (AKP) government in Turkey un-Islamic.
İslam worked closely with current Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş when he was a critic of the AKP.
In the currently ongoing post-coup purge, over 135,000 people, including thousands within the military, have been purged due to their real or alleged connection to the Gülen movement, according to a statement by the labor minister on Jan. 10. As of Feb. 1, 89,775 people were being held without charge, with an additional 43,885 in pre-trial detention.