The Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) has laid off forty five people who are either judges or prosecutors as part of the ongoing Gülenist terror cult (FETÖ) probe, judicial sources stated late Monday.
Chief judge of the trial which decided last week to release suspects including senior Gülenists Hanım Büşra Erdal and Gökçe Fırat Çulhaoğlu, İbrahim Lorasdağı and two other judges Barış Cömert and Necla Yeşilyurt Gülbiçim are among the judges suspended from their posts.
The first hearing of a trial on the Gülenist Terror Group's (FETÖ) influence in the media got underway last Monday in Istanbul.
Twenty-nine defendants accused of pro-FETÖ propaganda, including Atilla Taş, a former pop singer turned columnist, face prison terms of up to 22 years on charges of membership to a terrorist group, and aiding and abetting a terrorist group.
Two defendants are being tried in absentia, including Said Sefa, a journalist who is accused of setting up notorious FETÖ-linked Twitter phenomenon "fuatavni."
The terrorist group, which faces a new barrage of trials after the July 15 coup attempt, its latest bid to seize power through its infiltrators, is accused of running media outlets to vindicate its actions and orchestrating defamation campaigns against the cult's critics.
Several lawmakers from the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), whose members have been a fixture in trials against FETÖ, watched the trial open at the 25th High Criminal Court in Istanbul's Çağlayan courthouse complex.
Defendants range from Atilla Taş, a pop music singer who took to writing pro-FETÖ pieces in recent years, to Gökçe Fırat Çulhaoğlu, who ran a far-left publication that opposed Turkey's crackdown on the terrorist group.
Said Sefa, a journalist accused of setting up Twitter phenomenon "fuatavni" account, is also among the defendants. Sefa remains at large, along with another defendant.
Fuatavni was a purported whistleblower that disseminated confidential information regarding the inner workings of the presidential complex in Ankara and often hurled insults and threats against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
