Just prior to recent elections, up to 10,000 joined youth demonstrations in the streets across Turkey against internet censorship, while online activists shut down government websites.
Now that the elections are over, the government is rounding up activists alleged to have been involved in those actions.
Turkish Police are pretty notorious for harshly suppressing demonstrations, in general, and ill-treating detainees.
Here's some media reports on the most recent arrests of local Anonymous activists in Turkey.
Turkish Police arrested 32 people in 12 provinces on suspicion of being members of the international “hactivist” movement.
...the total of 35 arrests in the last few days puts Anonymous, which is also the subject of a major FBI investigation, under more pressure.
The Americans issued 40 arrest warrants for alleged Anonymous members in February, and six British people are currently on bail after raids by Scotland Yard’s specialist cyber crime unit. Participation in a Distributed Denial of Service attack carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years in Britain.
The Telegraph
Last week, on the eve of legislative elections in Turkey, Anonymous hacked several Turkish websites, including that of the Turkish telecoms authority TIB, which regulates Internet use and helped develop the government's Internet censorship programme.
Nine minors arrested in the sweep were subsequently released, Anatolia said.
In November, a Turkish court quashed a three-year ban on the popular video hosting site Youtube, which was the fifth most popular site in the country until it was closed for showing clips deemed disrespectful to Ataturk.
The Vienna-based Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe has voiced repeated concern over Turkish policies that restrict access to information, which some suggest are hampering Ankara's progress towards EU membership.
Agence France-Presse
Latests arrests in Turkey are in response to a campaign that's been underway since before the recent elections.
Tens of thousands protested in Istanbul in May against Internet censorship and plans for a new filtering system, due to be introduced on Aug. 22, under which users must sign up for one of four filters -- domestic, family, children and standard.
Anonymous said the filtering system would make it possible to keep records of people's Internet activity.
With an election three days away, access to Turkey's telecoms authority website, identified as a main target in the protest against a planned new Internet filtering system, was blocked as planned at 6 p.m. (1500 GMT).
While authorities worked to limit the disruption, other sites were also blocked including those related to social security, meteorology and several telecoms-related sites.
One of these was the official site where people can report inappropriate Internet content.
In response, a group of nationalist Turkish hackers said on the ayyildiz.org website they had launched a retaliatory strike against Anonymous sites.
Reuters
Further Reuters report on recent Anon Turkey arrests
Because Turkey is contending for membership in the EU, human rights of the activists may be somewhat better protected from abuse, torture and death, at least to some extent, than in some other countries in the region...but they could still be facing stiff prison sentences.
Turkey's recent past history has been pretty bleak in this regard...
Torture or ill-treatment have long been routinely inflicted on people detained for common criminal offences as well as on political charges.
"Disappearance" and extrajudicial execution are new patterns of violation which appeared in the early 1990s and have since claimed hundreds of lives.
Turkish citizens do not enjoy true freedom of expression. During the past six years scores of prisoners of conscience have served terms of imprisonment for expressing their non-violent opinions.
Hundreds more, including writers and artists, are being tried in State Security Courts and threatened with imprisonment because they dared to express their political views.
Turkish Human Rights info & groups
An interesting report recently released for Amnesty International's 50th Anniversary details a broad general historic shift underway around the world, with activists' use of online social networking, and it's suppression by authoritarian governments:
Knife Edge
For more background and analysis re: Anonymous, click through to Anonymous DKos Group diaries and archive, where you can also click on the little heart, to get new posts on this topic added to your stream.