Turkey’s state-run news agency says authorities have captured two more people suspected of being part of a group of soldiers who raided President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s seaside hotel during the failed coup.
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Turkey’s soccer federation says all members of its committees have resigned to help the investigation into the movement of a USA -based cleric who the country’s government says was behind the failed July 15 coup that left more than 200 people dead.
It also announces the discharge of 1,389 military personnel, including Erdogan’s chief military adviser, who had been arrested days after the attempted coup, the Chief of General Staff’s charge d’affaires and the defense minister’s chief secretary.
The rally in Cologne, in which Turks waved national flags and pictures of Erdogan, was one of several planned on Sunday in European as well as Turkish cities and towns. “No to the coup” – is being held on the other side of the Rhine river from downtown Cologne.
The slogan of the demonstration was “Yes to democracy”. Germany’s highest court rejected a complaint against that ban Saturday night.
Germany is home to Europe’s largest ethnic Turkish diaspora.
German media said authorities had made a decision to bar Erdogan from addressing a rally via videoconference in the city of Cologne on Sunday due to concerns over public order, prompting an angry response from Turkey’s EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik. Erdogan fired nearly 1,400 members of the armed services for their suspected ties to Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, Erdogan’s arch-nemesis, whom he accuses of masterminding the failed attempt to overthrow his leadership.
With mass purges of suspected Gulen supporters well underway in all state institutions, the media and some private companies, the Turkish Football Federation said on Sunday all its affiliated boards had resigned for the sake of “security checks”.
At least 246 people were killed and 2,000 injured in the coup attempt, as Erdogan called on Turks to go into the streets and defend the government from insurgent soldiers. The cleric, who heads an worldwide network of schools, charities and businesses, denies any knowledge of or participation in the coup.
Erdogan spokesman Ibrahim Kalin criticized a decision by German authorities not to permit messages from politicians in Turkey to be shown on a video screen at a Sunday anti-coup rally in the German city of Cologne that was expected to draw up to 30,000 people.
A new presidential decree has introduced sweeping reforms to Turkey’s military in the wake of the failed coup in the country.
The decree, the third issued under a three-month state of emergency declared after the attempted coup, gives the president and prime minister the authority to issue direct orders to the commanders of the army, air force and navy.
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In a televised interview later Saturday, Erdogan also “suggested making the General Staff and the National Intelligence Agency directly answerable to the presidency”, and added that “this would be discussed with opposition leaders”, according to Anadolu.
