Police estimated about 40,000 descended on Cologne on Sunday to show support for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as well as thousands of others for counter demonstrations. Gulen, who heads an global network of schools, charities and businesses, denies any knowledge of or participation in the coup.
Advertisement
The scale of Mr Erdogan’s crackdown – more than 60,000 people in the military, judiciary, civil service and schools have been either detained, suspended or placed under investigation since the July 15-16 coup – has unnerved Turkey’s North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies, fuelling tension between Ankara and the West. It’s part of a broad crackdown by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government on those suspected of ties to a US -based cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who the government says was behind the attempted coup.
“It is said so often that this is the pro-Erdogan rally but it is not, it is an anti-coup demonstration”, said one woman, Kevser Demir. Of those detained, more than 9,000 people, mostly in the military, have been formally arrested, according to figures from Interior Minister Efkan Ala. On Sunday, Turkey’s soccer federation said every member of its committees had tendered their resignations “for the well-being of the ongoing security investigation”.
The new wave of army expulsions and the overhaul of the Supreme Military Council (YAS) were announced in the official state gazette just hours after Mr Erdogan said late on Saturday he planned to shut down existing military academies and put the armed forces under the command of the Defence Ministry. Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in the United States, has denied the charges and condemned the coup.
Erdogan stressed that the current phase is witnessing a discussion with opposition parties on the possibility of the general staff and the National Intelligence Agency (MIT) to be tied to the Presidency through a constitutional package, if the opposition accepts.
Organizers at the rally played the Turkish and German national anthems and held a minute of silence for the people killed in the attempted coup.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has said that there is “no place in Germany” for any side to “bring domestic political tensions from Turkey to us in Germany and intimidate people with other political convictions”.
Omer Celik, Turkey’s European Union affairs minister tweeted earlier on Sunday that the German constitutional court’s decision ran counter to democratic values and free speech.
Germany is home to Europe’s largest ethnic Turkish diaspora.
Advertisement
A senior Turkish official says the ban violates freedom of expression.
