Professor Mehmet Altan, who was dismissed from his university post and jailed for 21 months on coup allegations in the wake of a failed coup in July 2016, filed a complaint on Monday against a commission established to review objections to dismissals made as part of an ongoing purge in Turkey.
The State of Emergency Procedures Investigation Commission, so named due to a state of emergency that was declared in Turkey after the abortive putsch, refused to reinstate Professor Altan to his post at Istanbul University.
Altan cited an abuse of power and a disregard for the Turkish constitution in his complaint against the chair and members of the commission.
Altan is one among thousands of academics and more than 150,000 civil servants who were dismissed from their positions by means of presidential decrees issued after the coup attempt.
In June the İstanbul Regional Court of Law’s 2nd Criminal Chamber ordered the release pending appeal of Altan after agreeing to consider an appeal of the decision of a local court, which had sentenced him along with five other defendants to aggravated life on charges of attempting to overturn the constitutional order.
Altan was held in pre-trial detention from September 2016 to June 2018.
