Turkey turns on media in new post-coup crackdown

Arrest warrants issued for 42 journalists as Turkish Airlines sacks 211 staff over links to preacher accused of plotting coup.

A Turkish draped in a window at a bus station in Istanbul on July 25, 2016. Petros Karadjias / AP Photo

Ankara // Turkey issued arrest warrants for more than 40 journalists on Monday in a new phase of a crackdown that has seen thousands detained following a failed coup against president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Among the journalists sought are Nazli Ilicak, who was fired from the pro-government Sabah daily in 2013 for criticising ministers caught up in a corruption scandal, Ercan Gun, the news editor of Fox TV in Turkey, and the commentator Bulent Mumay.

Only five of the 42 journalists for whom warrants were issued were detained yesterday and 11 are believed to have already left the country.

The targeting of journalists follows the arrests, sackings or suspensions of more than 60,000 soldiers, police, judges, bureaucrats, academics and others since the July 15 coup attempt, which the authorities blame on the reclusive US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. More than 13,000 people have been detained.

The fallout has also affected the national carrier, with Turkish Airlines announcing on Monday that it had fired 211 employees over suspected links to Mr Gulen and behaviour “conflicting with the interest of our country”.

The sweeping crackdown has raised tensions with the European Union, jeopardising Ankara’s membership bid, while a potential diplomatic crisis with Washington is looming if the United States refuses to extradite Mr Gulen to Turkey, a fellow Nato member.

The French foreign ministry said Turkey’s response to the coup “should not compromise the rule of law and fundamental liberties like freedom of the press”.

Amnesty International said the overall crackdown was a “brazen purge based on political affiliation” and the latest detentions represented a “draconian clampdown on freedom of expression”.

Police on Monday also arrested about 40 people at the army’s military academy in Istanbul, and 31 academics, including professors, were also detained in the city over alleged links to Mr Gulen.

Security forces detained seven fugitive soldiers on the southern Aegean coast for taking part in an attack on the hotel where Mr Erdogan stayed when the coup bid was launched. Described by Turkish media as an “assassination squad”, they had evaded arrest for days by hiding in the caves and hills above the resort of Marmaris where Mr Erdogan was staying.

Seeking to rally national cross-party support for his rule after defeating the attempted putsch, Mr Erdogan on Monday hosted two top opposition leaders at his presidential palace for the first time.

The president, whose Justice and Development Party (AKP) holds the majority in parliament, met the Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) chief Devlet Bahceli.

The fact the encounter took place was a major turnaround in the polarised world of Turkish politics, in particular for Mr Kilicdaroglu who had vowed never to set foot in Mr Erdogan’s new palace, which he had denounced as illegal.

“It was a positive meeting for contributing to the normalisation” after the coup, the CHP said after the two-hour-forty minute meeting.

The CHP had on Sunday called a mass rally in Istanbul’s Taksim Square and, to signal a united stand against the coup plotters, the demonstration was also backed by the AKP.

However, in a sign that the harmony is not complete, the head of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas was not invited to the palace talks.

Turkey has undergone a seismic shift since the night of violence when renegade soldiers sought to topple Mr Erdogan but were stopped by crowds of civilians and loyalist security forces. At least 270 people were killed on both sides.

Mr Erdogan last week announced a three-month state of emergency which, along with suggestions Ankara might reinstate capital punishment for the plotters, has caused alarm in the EU and Turkey’s allies.

The government says the stringent measures are needed to clear the influence of Mr Gulen from Turkey’s institutions. It claims he has created a “parallel state” inside Turkey.

Mr Gulen – who lives in a compound in rural Pennsylvania and whose foundation runs a global network of schools, charities and media interests – has denied the accusations.

The military chief Hulusi Akar, who was held hostage by the coup plotters, told investigators that rebel generals had offered to speak personally with Mr Gulen if he joined them.

“I told them ‘you are on the wrong path’. I said ‘don’t do it, don’t spill blood’,” he was quoted as saying

“But [rebel general] Mehmet Disli said ‘we have taken that path. There is no going back’.”

Officers accused of staging the coup attempt will be tried in a district of Ankara laden with symbolism for the country’s recent history – the scene of an army show of strength before a “post-modern coup” ousted its first Islamist-led government in 1997.

Justice minister Bekir Bozdag said a new courthouse will be built in the district of Sincan, where the army paraded several dozen tanks and armoured vehicles on February 4, 1997 after an Islamist protest attended by the Iranian ambassador.

Within months, Islamist prime minister Necmettin Erbakan was forced from power by secular generals who used pressure behind the scenes rather than the kind of overt military force employed in three earlier coups.

Another Islamist politician at the time, the mayor of Istanbul, was tried for reading a poem that was seen as inciting hatred and jailed for four months in 1999. That man was Mr Erdogan.

Nearly 9,000 of the more than 13,000 people arrested over the failed coup are soldiers, including about 160 generals and admirals.

Mr Bozdag has said there are currently no courts in Turkey capable of handling such large numbers of defendants, hence the need for a new building.

“It will be within the district borders of Sincan,” he told broadcaster CNN Turk. “We have to create a place where the trial can be held in a sound way.”

* Agence France-Presse and Reuters