Turkish nationals resident in Nigeria have decried what they called an attempt by their country’s  leadership to label them as terrorists over the July 15 coup.
This came as authorities of Nile University, based in Abuja, announced that it has admitted 80 Nigerian students studying in universities in Turkey but deported to Nigeria as result of the coup.
The students were studying in institutions owned by Fetullah Movement, an organizations accused by Turkish authorities of masterminding the failed coup. 
Briefing newsmen in Abuja, president of the  Association of Turkish  People in Nigeria (ATPEN), Germel Yigit, alleged that the authorities of his country were clamping down on elements considered enemies hiding under the subterfuge of the last coup.
Yigit, who condemned the recent assassination of a Russian diplomat in Turkey, lamented that the government of Turkey was labeling people who are opposed to goings-on in Turkey as coup plotters.
He lamented that the murder of the Russian envoy was an indication that the situation in their country had grown worse since last July’s failed coup attempt against the government of Turkey. 
The group said it was opposed to any form of terrorist attack irrespective of the identity of the perpetrators  because, according to them, “a terrorist cannot be a Moslem and a Moslem cannot be a terrorist.”
He blamed the worsening security situation in Turkey on the refusal of the government in power to uphold human rights and abide by decent democratic principles. 
Yigit decried what he described as repression of the citizens of Turkey by the government of President  Recep Erdogan, stressing that freedom of speech had been muzzled with the  clampdown on the mass media, intellectuals and professionals in that country. 
He disclosed that so far, a total of 142 senior journalists were languishing in various prisons  across Turkey for holding views different from that of the government of the day.  
He said that since July 15, 2016 when the failed coup took pace, 180 media outlets have been shut down, 3,465 judges and professionals dismissed from their jobs, and a total of 27,239 persons have been arrested by security agencies in Turkey. 
Yigit disclosed that the mass crackdown on the people by the Turksh government had become so intense that the normal prisons were filed, and the authorities have resorted to building concentration camps to detain people, a practice reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s era in Germany.
He blamed the unpopularity of President Edorgan’s regime on his failure to keep his promises to the people. 
According to Yigit, when  Edorgan came into power in 2002, he made certain promises which garnered him huge popular support.  These included a promise to make Turkey a developed democracy and take Turkey into the European Union. 
The people  had expected him to change the country’s constitution from the military-imposed one to a democratic one. But these promises failed to materialize.
 
Yigit  claimed that the Turkish government has been trying to label  its citizens in Nigeria as terrorists, stressing that the  group had lived in worked in Nigeria for about twenty years and its activities have never been connected to terrorism. 
The government of Turkey, he claims, has been stigmatizing its citizens abroad and luring their host  counties to shut down their investments especially those that bear the Turksh name. 
He said that many countries, especially those that are economically weak, have been offered aid in various ways to ensure that these Turkish citizens were frustrated in foreign lands.