Senior Turkish officials rounded on Germany for preventing Erdogan from addressing a rally on Sunday of his supporters in Cologne via video link. Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in the United States, has denied the charges and condemned the coup.
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It comes after an announcement last week that more than 1,700 military personnel had been dishonourably discharged for their role in the putsch, which saw a faction of the military commandeer tanks, helicopters and warplanes in an attempt to topple the government. Thousands more have been detained and almost 70,000 people have been suspended or dismissed from their jobs in the education, media, health care, military and judicial sectors. Ankara has demanded Gulen’s extradition, but Washington is asking for evidence of the cleric’s involvement and says the extradition process must be allowed to run its course. Four soldiers were killed by the Kurdish militants on Sunday in two separate incidents, officials said.
Security was tight in the immediate area around Incirlik on Sunday, Turkish security sources said, before an expected visit by the USA chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joseph Dunford.
State-run news agency Anadolu said the soldiers were dismissed because of alleged links to the movement led by USA -based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of masterminding coup.
Erdogan is bolstering the police force, which helped defeat the coup forces, and rewarding those commanders who remained loyal to him with promotions as he reshapes “Turkey’s foreign policy away from United States interests”, the report said.
“Eleven of them were captured in Ula”, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told a press conference after a cabinet meeting, referring to a town near Marmaris.
Turkish foreign ministry sources said the envoy was summoned to “strongly express our disappointment” over the ban on a popularly elected leader from addressing the rally and called the German approach “unacceptable”.
He said one soldier was still at large.
During their meeting, the Turkish premier also told Dunford that the Turkish armed forces were fulfilling its duties “at full capacity” after the reshuffling in the wake of the coup attempt and said that cooperation continued “uninterrupted” with the USA and other allies in the fight against terrorist groups including the Islamic State (IS) jihadists.
Hours before the demonstration, Germany’s constitutional court rejected an application to show via video link live speeches from Turkey by politicians including Erdogan, over fears they could work up the crowd.
Also Sunday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu demanded the 28-nation European Union say exactly when Turkish citizens will be granted visa-free entry and added that, if the rules aren’t loosened, Ankara will back off a deal to stem the flow of migrants into Europe. He said a restructuring of Turkey’s intelligence structures may follow.
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.
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According to Korb, the post-coup backlash marks Turkey’s shift away from the secular, democratic values that underpinned the country in the 20th Century and towards an Islamist autocracy under Erdogan. I would bend my neck and would say, ‘They are telling the truth.
