The decisions came after Turkey discharged almost 1,700 officers, including 149 generals and admirals, suspected of involvement in the July 15 attempted coup.
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Late on Thursday Turkey announced a shake-up of its armed forces, NATO’s second largest, with the promotion of 99 colonels to the rank of general or admiral and the dishonourable discharge of almost 1,700 military personnel over their alleged roles in the coup. The dishonorable discharges included around 40 percent of Turkey’s admirals and generals.
In Germany, the governor of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said his regional government received a letter from the Turkish consul-general in Stuttgart asking it to check and “reevaluate” organizations, facilities and schools “which in the opinion of the Turkish government are, it says, “controlled” by the Gulen movement”.
While many people criticize the upcoming rally, in connection to Erdogan’s crackdown on media and opposition that followed the recent failed coup attempt, the police of Cologne states that freedom of peaceful demonstrations is a basic right of German citizens, and “banning protests is only an option in exceptional cases”.
“Not a single person has come to give condolences either from the European Union. or from the West”, said Erdogan.
Erdogan has said that Gulen harnessed his extensive network of schools, charities and businesses, built up in Turkey and overseas over decades, to create a “parallel state” that aimed to take over the country.
President said those who failed to show solidarity with Ankara and anxious more about the culprits than democracy could not be Turkey’s friends.
Erdogan noted that the country’s military chief of staff and the intelligence agency will be under control of the president if parliament passes a constitutional package.
Chief of general staff General Hulusi Akar stands with other Military chiefs during a Supreme Military Council meeting with the Prime Minister Binali Yildirim at Ataturk’s mausoleum in Ankara on July 28, 2016.
The shake-up comes as Turkey’s military – long seen as the guardians of the secular republic – is already stretched by violence in the mainly Kurdish southeast, and Islamic State attacks on its border with Syria. As home to millions of Syrian refugees, it is also the European Union’s partner in a deal reached previous year to halt the biggest flow of migrants into Europe since World War Two.
Clapper said the purge has “swept aside many Turkish officers who dealt with the United States and landed some of them in jail”, according to a Reuters report. “There’s no question this is going to set back and make more hard cooperation with the Turks”, said Clapper. Its clampdown seeks to target anyone suspected of ties to USA -based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom the government accuses of masterminding the plot.
Senior U.S. leaders, including President Barack Obama, have spoken with their Turkish counterparts in the last two weeks since the coup attempt.
“If the USA general says that only the members of the gulenists are fighting against IS, we would strongly reject it”, he said. The authorities say such closures target only Gulenists, though some journalists detained are known for left-wing secular views and do not share the Gulenists’ religious outlook. Dozens of media organizations, majority also linked to Gulen, were ordered shuttered late Wednesday.
After a hearing lasting to midnight, four were freed but 17 placed under arrest ahead of trial, charged with “membership of a terror group”, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.
Chairman Mustafa Boydak and two group executives, Sukru and Halit Boydak, were held in raids on their homes, it said.
Authorities issued warrants for the detention of 89 journalists as the clampdown extended to the media.
Teams from the Izmir Police Department Counterterrorism Bureau conducted simultaneous operations around the city and had apprehended several suspects, the news agency reported.
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The head of the organisation, US-based Fethullah Gulen, has denied involvement in the coup attempt, but evidence slowly being gathered by arrested coup plotters suggests the 75-year-old, who has been living in self-imposed exile since 1999, was behind the plot.
