{"id":2782,"date":"2017-12-09T11:42:14","date_gmt":"2017-12-09T11:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2782"},"modified":"2017-12-11T11:47:27","modified_gmt":"2017-12-11T11:47:27","slug":"hamshen-armenian-activists-nurcan-vayic-aksu-and-cemil-aksu-released-from-turkish-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2782","title":{"rendered":"Hamshen Armenian Activists Nurcan Vayi\u00e7 Aksu and Cemil Aksu Released from Turkish Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>ARMENIAN WEEKLY<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">HOPA, Turkey\u2014Political activists Nurcan Vayi\u00e7 Aksu and Cemil Aksu\u2014both of Armenian origin\u2014were released from a Turkish prison on Friday, after having been <a href=\"https:\/\/covcasbulletin-info.hhd.am\/?p=2776\">incarcerated for several weeks<\/a> [link by CB ed.].<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Political activist Nurcan Vayi\u00e7 Aksu was taken into police custody on Oct. 19 after a house raid. Her husband, journalist and environmental activist Cemil Aksu, was arrested a few days later in the city of Artvin for supposedly \u201cpraising crime and criminals\u201d in his social media posts.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">According to reports, Vayi\u00e7 is a human rights activist and a member of the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP). Aksu is the local co-chair of the opposition Peoples\u2019 Democratic Party (HDP) and one of the editors of the Gor-Hemshin cultural magazine.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The couple is from the town of Hopa, in Artvin, commonly known as the Hemshin (Hamshen) region, about 12 miles from the Georgian border. As longtime political activists, the two have spoken out about the local history and Armenian identity of the Hemshin region, as well as on environmental matters and women\u2019s rights issues. Both have been critical of the Turkish government, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Upon being released, the couple posted photos on social media with their eight-year-old child Arev, who was being taken care of by his aunt while his parents were imprisoned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>ARMENIAN WEEKLY HOPA, Turkey\u2014Political activists Nurcan Vayi\u00e7 Aksu and Cemil Aksu\u2014both of Armenian origin\u2014were released from a Turkish prison on Friday, after having been incarcerated <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2782\" title=\"Hamshen Armenian Activists Nurcan Vayi\u00e7 Aksu and Cemil Aksu Released from Turkish Prison\">[more &gt;&gt;&gt;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2783,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","category-turkey-minority-rights"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/covcasbulletin.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Covcas-Turkey-Hamshen-Armenians-Cemil-Nurcan-Vayic-Arev-Akcu.jpg?fit=528%2C806&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2784,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2782\/revisions\/2784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}